Just Four Quid appeal

(From Tony Britton)

MAY BE REPOSTED

The 'Just Four Quid' appeal which aims over the course of a year to
raise £1m for biomedical research into ME/CFS has declared this as
"The Week of Happy Ignorance".

Last week, appeal flagged up a large number of ways in which people can
save money on household bills. This week, their website suggests folk
take a holiday from all the troubles of the world by not buying papers
and even avoiding the news on radio, TV and the internet.

The organiser says in her latest blog:

"Quite a few people think that we see too much news. Journalist John
Naish, in his book "Enough", is one of them. He thinks that in
these days of 24-hour rolling news, we get a distorted idea of the world
through seeing the same footage of the latest horrors over and over
again. With the same images played repeatedly, we get the idea that the
world is much worse than it actually is; we forget that it's
"news" because it's rare.

"We also, he believes, forget that it's not local; much of what we
see on our TV news is happening thousands of miles away but our
primitive brains – wired to understand what's going on within
our Neolithic ancestors' walking range – doesn't really
register this and feels it has to keep watching the news for more
details of this "local and imminent" threat.

"Some psychologists feel that the stress that arises from the news is so
great that we shouldn't watch more than 30 minutes a day, in order
to avoid anxiety-related depression. For me, part of the
"holidayness" of any holiday is that I don't read the paper
and don't watch the news, so I can believe there's something in
this."

So how about adding "stress-buster" to the recession-busting elements of
JFQ and tip any savings made from not buying the papers this week into
the JFQ Appeal which benefits The ME Association's Ramsay Research Fund
and ME Research UK.
For more information about the Just Four Quid appeal, please click here