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Thursday 16 September 2010

Myddfai Magic

So I've just trawled my way through "the oldest newspaper in Wales" the Carmarthen journal, in search of something for me to pounce on with my wolverine-like skeptical ways. But to my annoyance (and admittedly pleasure) all I found that vaguely annoyed me, was a small article on the village of Myddfai getting lottery funding to "create a sustainable business venture based on ancient local herbal traditions".

Watch out Myddfai, here come the pain!

Let's start with the headline for the article. "Funding for herbal cures is a tonic for rural village" that alone annoys me as it flat out claims that the products this company sells are cures, that they are legitimate medical treatments. Also I'm always wary of worlds like "herbal" and "ancient", "tradition" especially. These words, to a lot of people, conjure images of healthy living people, nature, and generally nice things. But to me already I have images in my head of vapid faces, telling me about the benefits of living on seeds, and blabbering on about "auras", whilst claiming that modern medicine is evil and that we should in fact trust remedies that have long since vanished, as if their age somehow gives them validity. It seems all they're selling is soaps, herbal teas and other nice smelling things, which is fine if their just being sold as those things. But if they're being marketed as having magical healing powers, then to me that's clearly fraud. Having a look at their website this seems to be the case. Under the words "Welcome to Myddfai" lays this hunk of drivel "Myddfai is a special place with a remarkable heritage – where legend and history combine in a unique blend of magic and healing."


There's no such thing as magic people, GROW UP!

Well you know how I feel about this business but the project as a whole is a little more blurry. What makes it blurry is that they will get other benefits including getting the village hall rebuilt, a visitor centre and tourist shop. These surely are good things for the village, but why do they have to commit fraud to attain them? I can't help feeling that you could get the same benefits without the superstitious nonsense. If the business of selling smelly things is unsustainable without the claims of magic then surely there must be some other business idea that would help this village prosper?

Am I being too harsh in my criticism of what is probably just some old ladies up in the hills selling tea, and will probably have no real detrimental effects? If this weren't supported by the lottery fund then I'd probably not be so annoyed by it, then it's just an issue of fraud, but since it's using money that as far as I'm aware normally goes to charities I'm a little more skeptical of it all.

Let me know what you think.

Ray

2 comments:

  1. I have a feeling that their close neighbour has had a 'Prince Charles effect'.

    ReplyDelete