Thanks to @bengoldacre for pointing me in the direction of this truly interesting chap, Andy Kadir-Buxton. My impression is that Andy is either a delusional fantasist, or a true genius who has contributed so much to the world already, and could potentially cure an awful lot of the world’s ills, if only people would act upon his suggestions a little more.

I will present some of his claims and suggestions and see what you think. Firstly, let’s start with a quote made on the BBC’s “Have Your Say” site:

Ted Heath used to boast of having killed the inventor of Economy 7 (he missed and killed another school boy) and giving the invention to PM Harold Wilson.Andy Kadir-Buxton, on ‘Have Your Say’

Now some of us, like me for instance, would suggest that this is a rather extraordinary claim, and therefore any suggestions of this nature could reasonably do with some evidence to back them up. Unfortunately, it would appear that Andy Kadir Buxton is unwilling (or, if I was being less generous, unable) to provide any evidence of Ted Heath’s murderous activities.

So who did come up with Economy 7, anyway? Why, it was Andy Kadir-Buxton:

At the age of 12 I invented Economy 7 to cut pollution and put the idea to Prime Minister Harold Wilson. For this ‘crime’ Ted Heath attempted to assassinate me. He killed a 14 year old boy in a local school who he thought was the inventor of Economy 7. For the rest of his political career Ted Heath boasted of killing the inventor of Economy7, even when he knew I was alive.‘Red Rose Andy’ on Daily Express ‘Have Your Say’

Red Rose Andy is Andy Kadir-Buxton: he links off to the main Kadir-Buxton site, and of course the name ‘Red Rose’ Andy comes from the fact that Andy Kadir Buxton tells us that he invented the Labour Party’s Red Rose logo.

Let’s start with his “inventions, campaigns and ambitions”. As he doesn’t state which things are his inventions, and which things he has just supported, it’s sometimes difficult to be entirely sure which is which, but here are some of them:

• The Labour Party Red Rose Logo
• Microsurgery
• The Buxton Coefficient of Voting Behaviour that proves that the Labour vote is inversely proportional to the price of oil
• Saved the ‘Dodo Tree’ from extinction

The Kadir Buxton method: curriculum vitae

Now my research into these four things, picked more or less at random from things which sounded like “inventions”, has been unable to come up with a definite answer for who suggested that the Labour party start using the red rose symbol, which replaced the Red Flag in 1986. However, as the Swedish equivalent were using a red rose prior to this time, I don’t really see it as an ‘invention’ as such…

So far as I can ascertain, microsurgery was pioneered in the US and Japan during the 1960s, but obviously if I’ve missed some crucial evidence. Although since Andy was allegedly 44 in 2006, this would have made him 2 in 1964 when the “first true series of microsurgical free-tissue transfers” took place. If we are to believe Andy on this one, he must have been a particularly precocious child.

As for “The Buxton Coefficient of Voting Behaviour”, well, I can’t find any reference to it online (when searching with quotes around it). I can’t therefore assume it’s any more widely accepted than the “Pickard Made Up Off The Top Of My Head Rules Of Voter Behaviour”. But I am willing to accept that he came up with it.

And then there’s the Dodo Tree, which was believed to be near extinction in 1973, when it was believed there were only 13 specimens which had not germinated since the Dodo had become extinct (because it required the Dodo to germinate). It didn’t require the Dodo to germinate, that younger trees existed, although admittedly it was a rare species.

Next let’s look at some of his less crackpot controversial schemes: — I’ll leave aside his free clean planet-saving energy and the bringing the dead back to life by stamping on them ones for now:

Firstly, there’s brain-washing. No, wait, this is a good thing:

The simple fact is that the ability to remove unwanted character traits, whether voluntary ones that lead to a life of crime, or due to illness such as Alzheimer’s, or due to brain injury such as being wounded in wars is a good thing. Removing bad memories that lead to such things as depression, manic depression and psychopathy can also be treated in the same way.

The Kadir-Buxton Method is done by making a fist of both hands, and striking both ears of the patient at exactly the same time and pressure with the soft part of the inner hand which is where the thumb joins the hand.

Kadir Buxton: Brain Washing

Basically then, by hitting people about the head in precisely the correct manner, Kadir-Buxton asserts that you can remove unwanted character traits, memories, and at least make a partial recovery from traumatic brain injury. Which is fortunate, as I imagine repeatedly hitting people about the head could cause percussive brain injury…

Kadir Buxton then looks specifically at Alzheimer’s, saying:

The work of Clive Holmes reported in New Scientist Issue No. 2666 suggests that there may now be a permanent cure for this most cruel of diseases when the two methods are combined in the treatment of the patient.Kadir Buxton: Cure for Alzheimers?

Now when I read this, I assumed this meant that Clive Holmes had somehow endorsed the Kadir Buxton method. Only upon reading the specific quote from Clive Holmes was I disabused of this notion:

Clive Holmes is quoted in ‘New Scientist’ Issue 2668 as saying: “With Alzheimer’s, the damage to the brain happens gradually over a period of years. The best thing you could normally hope for it to keep things where they are. The underlying structure-of dead brain cells-will still be there.”Kadir Buxton: Cure for Alzheimers? [2]

In other words, the only evidence that clouting people round the side of the head (in a very particular manner, of course) can cure Alzheimer’s is the word of Andy Kadir-Buxton. Now I would assume that you’d need some sort of medical evidence for this: some methodology, some experiments, some mechanism by which the clump around the head cures Alzheimers’.

I would suggest that this lack of evidence is why the medical profession are reluctant to abandon all of those methods which have been proven to work. But there is of course another potential reason, that of the conspiracy:

I am having a hard time getting the Kadir-Buxton Method used in the UK because it would cut down the number of professionals that are needed at present, and of course, cut the amount of expensive drugs that drug companies sell at present.Kadir-Buxton Method

I myself have my own doubts. Doubts firstly — based on there not being any scientifically reviewed journals — on the efficacy of this method, and secondly on Kadir-Buxton’s claim to have invented it. I have found documentation which would seem to suggest a similar method was known to used to cure liver problems, and their mental effects, as early as 1889.

I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being “a general disinclination to work of any kind.”

What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down to laziness.

“Why, you skulking little devil, you,” they would say, “get up and do something for your living, can’t you?” – not knowing, of course, that I was ill.

And they didn’t give me pills; they gave me clumps on the side of the head. And, strange as it may appear, those clumps on the head often cured me – for the time being. I have known one clump on the head have more effect upon my liver, and make me feel more anxious to go straight away then and there, and do what was wanted to be done, without further loss of time, than a whole box of pills does now.

Jerome Klapka Jerome: Three Men In A Boat (1889)

Andy informs us that we can all increase our IQs…

Learning logic and then thinking logically takes time and patience but an increase in IQ brings with it an increase in the ability to solve everyday problems which is socially useful. An IQ of over 150 brings with it the bonus of being able to invent which can be economially useful.Buxton-Kadir: Increasing Your IQ

I particularly like the way that when you reach an IQ of 150 you will suddenly be able to invent. It’s like “going up a level” in some sort of role-playing game. Of course, the fact that IQ tests are crap as a measure of actual intelligence (see The Mismeasure of Man if you’ve not already read it) also needs to be thrown into this argument somewhere.

It would be foolish of me however to suggest that I think everything Kadir-Buxton has put forward is a load of hogwash nonsense ideas which may or may not be correct, he has also come up with another Kadir-Buxton Method, which in this case cures mental illness.

The Kadir-Buxton Method is a thirty second cure for mental illness. Only manic depression, psychopathy, and eating disorders take a little longer.

I will now reveal the secret. Basically, what you have to do is to drink a yard of ale as quickly as possible. Or 1.5 litres of ale, if you don’t have a yard glass. I guess I’m not 100% convinced that I have a mental illness (indeed, I’m beginning to think that compared with the next person I may well be perfectly sane), but if drinking three pints of beer quickly will cure me of any mental illness, then there’s no harm in playing things safe, is there?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the pub to cure myself of mental illness.

Oh: and one more thing, while I’m on. If after all of this you think that the ‘clumps on the head’ Kadir-Buxton method ought to be used in this country as part of the National Health Service, you might wish to sign Andy Kadir-Buxton’s e-petition.

Current signatories include:

• Loony McBin
• This man is a a crunchy nutter. Don’t listen to him
• I actively wish to vote against this absurd petition.
• Lazarus J Alzheimer III
• Pee-Pants, the Hobo Clown
• Why Not Try Trepanning While You’re At It
• Deborah Rock

…and four others.

Or, if you don’t support Andy, you might like to join the slightly tongue-in-cheek facebook group The Andy Kadir-Buxton Appreciation Society.