h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If you want a boiler fitted you dont go up to the first person you see with a spanner and ask them infact in some cases that would be illegal, the law says you have to go to someone who has proved their competency in the installation and maintainenece of such things.

So wht dont we have a testing and licensing of mediums, faith healers and anyone who claims commune with superbnatural powers.

If your a medium then you should be able to contact the dead grandparents or such like of one of the panel of lets say three people on the testing commmittee to find out some specific peace of infomation about them or their family.

Faith healers should be compeled to attend a special test at a day clinic where volunteers are invited to let the alleged faith healer have a go at healing them after the patients have seen their doctor or instead of them seeing a doctor. If the patients who have been faith healed have a better recovery rate than those who were given exclusively conventional medicine then they should be granted a twelve month livense to practice and charge for faith healing.

People who claim to speak wiht the bigG...well we have enough threads about that.

So would this be a good or bad idea and who else should be tested for their ability to do their job before being allowed to set up a business doing it.

one love

Applies to our royal family too.

Fortunately, the Queen's Corgi-registered.

Animal rehab centres, driving instructors, electricians, plumbers, gas technicians... Oh, we do! But who does the testing and how do you guarantee that the tests do not become bsolete or oteherwise worth little more than the application fee for a piece of paper?

Politicians.

We should set up a small test country, like Wales or Norn Ireland, where trainee politicians have to demonstrate their proficiency before allowing them anywhere near real departments. Similarly, Cabinet Ministers must have specialist training before being given a brief. Wouldn't it be good to have a health minister who knew one end of a cotton bud from the other?

*examines a nearby cotton bud*

*remembers she's in a test site nation*

"We should set up a small test country, like Wales or Norn Ireland,

Why reinvent the wheel? What's wrong with using Scotland like we normally do?

We've already done that. It's led to Gordon Brown, Alastair Darling, John Reid, Tony Blair .....

Oi! You're not turning my home into a test pit!!! Why not do tests in England - far more people there.

True that you need certification for fixing boilers etc, but doe that still mean the person's going to do it well? You can perform well for a test, then go back to your old ways after that.

Would be good to weed out all those mediums etc who pray on the vulnerable. but the frauds are so good at reading people they may be able to bluff their way through the test. And as for, as ws originally put, "people who claim to speak wiht the bigG"......I know of a place you can go if you want to see the results for real. And it's not "claiming" - it's real.

Good point.

A friend went to a hypnotist show last year and volunteered to go up on stage. The bloke whispered to her "Just play along!" People believed what was happening.

And there must be thousads of mediums etc who can read that someone's worried, recently wore a wedding ring, is pregnant, etc etc. Can't be too hard to pick up if someone's just got divorced or whatever and know the sort of thing to respond with.

Whatever people genuinly have some sort of gift, are rare and get lumped in with the frauds.

If you set up a genuine test for mediums then, quite simply, nobody would take it. They'd keep practising though, and the test would end up redundant. Even the few people who enter will just say "the atmosphere was wrong" or "I was getting bad vibes that interfered with my sight" or some such BS, the way they always have.
And meanwhile, there are plenty of certificates they can buy from the University of Quacksville, Idaho that will reassure the gullible.

My aunt would just say that the Archangel Michael told her she didn't have to take the test - handy how he always gives her advice like that!

Can be. Like psychics never win thew lottery...... Bit suss that.

>> Like psychics never win thew lottery <<

Oh, but they do. Then they just retire from the public eye.

Try this simple test:

1. Do you know anyone who's won the lottery?
2. Do you know any psychics?

The answer to both is "no", isn't it? Spooky!

RF

Funny that.

But you know what I mean. If you were really psychic, wouldn't you do the numbers of at least give them to someone to do?

Prognosticators, that's what you're after. Pychics can't have access to the lottery results unless some one knows them in advance.

Or clairvoyants.

Same thing, isn't it? Psychics, claivoyants....all tell the future.

Nothing's written in stone anyway. They could tell you you'll get hit by a bus next week, so you don't leave the house.

"Whatever people genuinly have some sort of gift, are rare and get lumped in with the frauds."

Oh good grief.

Personally, I'm all in favour. Make all practice of woo-woo illegal, unless and until the practitioner can demonstrate their claimed ability in front of a qualified panel, and by that I don't mean a panel of scientists, I mean a panel of professional magicians.

Furthermore, make the penalty for practicing this kind of nonsense seriously punitive - six figure fines, for starters, and if the convict can't pay then deduct it from their earnings for the rest of their life until it's paid. Drive these fraudulent scum off our televisions, out of the newspapers and magazines, off the seafront booths, and most definitely off the premium rate phone lines.

They profit from the misery and gullibility of others, and we permit it. The public would be incandescently angry about it if the majority of them weren't so stupid that they thought along the lines of the quote above.

SoRB

Hi SORB... Being your usual, easy-going, live and let live self I see