GCC chief executive Margaret Coats censors my election manifesto

coats-on-sun In the Election for the GCC each of the ten candidates were allowed only 500 words to present their manifesto to the chiropractic profession. The election is performed by the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) who earn a tidy sum from it. They get the commision from the chief executive and registrar who also acts as Election Returning Officer. Not surprisingly when Margaret Coats decided to remove chuncks of my 500 word manifesto and Kevin Grants the ERS were not keen to investigate. I got the second higest number of votes in the election and would probably have toped the poll but for Coats shenanigans which put Christina Cunliffe top. 

"Half of the chiropractic professional registration fees are spent on Fitness to Practice. The Annual Retention Income is listed as £2,729,600. Regulatory Costs are listed as £1,249,453. 46% and not 50% as stated by Kevin, so the whole statement was deleted.
I put a lot of thought into my Manifesto, it was exactly 500 words. My mention of the vote of confidence in Michael Copeland Griffiths is "confidential" and was deleted. The first statement from my manifesto was not factually correct because I stated that 77.1% of the profession had no confidence in the GCC, I should have said estimated or 77.1% ofthose surveyed. The old adage “Lies, dammed lies and statistics, so she deleted that.
On the cover of the Candidates’ Election Statements The Returning officer has stated “statements deemed offensive or defamatory by the Returning officer have been removed” I have written today to know which of us made “offensive or defamatory” statements which had to be removed. Coats insisted that they were??

I complained to Peter Dixon the chairman of the GCC, he said as he had participated in the election he felt it was not appropriate for him to investigate the complaint. So Coats does her Robert Mugabee and no one does anything. I would get used to this when it came to complaints about Coats.

Last week I asked Margaret Coats to tell me what had been deleted from my election statement that was “defamatory or offensive”.Margaret Coats obviously believes that 78% of the chiropractic profession has confidence in her.  Miss Coats states it was factually incorrect for me to state in my election statement that "In 2006 a survey found that 77.1% of the profession had no confidence in the GCC".
Coats explained “Based on information published by Bankside Law Limited, the survey to which you refer was not circulated to the whole of the profession. Those who responded represented 41 % of the profession at the time of the survey. 77.1% of that 41% replied `No’ to the question "Do you have confidence in the General Chiropractic Council to regulate the chiropractic profession?". This represented, therefore, approximately 32% of the profession at the time of the survey.
Its also worth remembering BCA members were advised not to respond to the survey and reading BCA candidates statements you would have to conclude that they are happy with the status quo.
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Miss Coats also points out, I censored the first sentence of your election statement ("In 2005 the Chairman of the GCC did not win a vote of confidence’) on the grounds that it was factually incorrect and consequently offensive and defamatory. The facts are that in December 2005 a motion of no confidence in the Chairman was proposed. The motion was not carried. I trust the above information is helpful” The motion of “no confidence” was not passed because the vote was tied ten votes to ten. Michael Copeland Grifiths did not loose a vote of no confidence, neither did he win a vote of confidence, he resigned as chairman soon after the vote. While my wording was not strictly accurate (only allowed 500 words in the statement) the meaning is perfectly clear and not even by a stretch of Margarets imagination, is it defamatory. If only I could say I was surprised ( unfortunately there are far too many chiropractors who can bare witness to her beligerence) that she would claim to have deleted the text on the grounds of “defamation”. My election statement had been on the home page of this site since mid March and was only moved to the forums last week. Every time she logged on to this site she would have seen it since March 14. On May 8th I received a letter from Peter Dixon regarding postings made between April 2nd and May 4th. He described them as “defamatory of Margaret Coats” and asked me to remove them. He went on to say “you appear to have published these defamatory statements with the direct intention of harming Miss Coats professional and personal reputation and also the GCC’s reputation”. Are we to believe then that Coats after noticing these “defamatory” postings on the forums failed to notice the Election Statement on the home page, that in her opinion was “defaming” the chairman? Are we to believe that Coats did not recognise the Election Statement on the home page, even after she had received a copy from the Election Reform Service and censored it, at least two weeks before Peter Dixon’s wrote to me? Are we really to believe her claim that my statement is “offensive and defamatory” towards the GCC chairman, or is this simply a ploy to get her off the hook for making a false statement on the cover of the “Candidates Election Statements”, clearly demonstrating that she was not suitable to act as the Returning Officer in this election. If Margaret Coats truly believes I have “defamed” Michael Copeland Griffiths, then she believes I am in breech of paragraph F1 of the GCC Code of practice;” Chiropractors must not discriminate against, or unjustly criticise, a colleague” and she has a statutory duty to make a complaint against me. If she does believe that I “defamed” the chairman, for her not to have noticed the statement on the home page after two months surfing the forums, if not, dereliction of duty, was incompetence of the highest order.

Richard Lanigan
Richard Lanigan

Richard Lanigan DC.BSc (Chiro) MSc( Health Promotion) was born in North London 1957 of Irish Parents and was educated in Ireland. Originally trained as a PE teacher, he moved to Denmark 1979, where a serious knee injury got him interested in rehabilitation and training methods. Richard founded Denmarks premier fitness centre "Sweat Shop" in 1982 and travelled all over the world to find how best to prepare athletes for competition. In 1984 he became fitness and rehab consultant to the Danish national badminton teams, handball teams and many football club sides. This approach to optimal performance is normal in 2010, however back in the early 80s it was very revolutionary, when stretching was limited to putting on your socks and knee injuries were immobilised for months in plaster.
Richard developed rehabilitation and fitness programmes for many of Denmark’s top athletes including Kirsten Larsten and Ib Frederickson, all England singles badminton champions in late 80s. "Team Denmark" hired him and his facilities to help prepare many of Denmarks athletes for the LA and Seoul Olympics. In 1990 he worked with Anya Anderson, Olympic gold medallist and voted worlds best female handball player at the Atlanta Olympics.
Richard advised Copenhagen’s main teaching (Rigs) Hospital on starting their rehab facility in 1984. In the same year he started working with Denmarks leading chiropractor; Ole Wessung DC, who demonstrated the effectiveness of Chiropractic in improving athletic performance, so impressed was Richard that in 1990 he moved back to England to study chiropractic at Anglo European College of Chiropractic and was student president for two years between 1993-1995.

Richard was awarded a fellowship by the College of Chiropractors in 2008, however in January 2009 Richard chose to stop using the title chiropractor in the UK because the British regulatory body for chiropractic (The GCC) had not maintained international standards of chiropractic education in the UK and including prescribing medicines in the chiropractic scope of practice, a fig leaf for incompetent UK chiropractors to hide behind. Richard has another clinic in Dublin and is a member of the Chiropractic Association of Ireland and the European Chiropractic Union.
Richard has four children Eloise aged 3, Molly and Isabelle aged five and the eldest Frederik aged twenty one is pursuing a career as a professional tennis player and has represented Norway in the Davis Cup in 2006 & 2007. None of Richards children have ever taken any medicine, www.vaccination.co.uk they eat healthy food, take lots of exercise and have their spines checked every month, www.familychiropractic.co.uk
Richard has had much experience working in the Cuban health service where Doctors are keen to incorporate drug free interventions (acupuncture and chiropractic) and prevention in their health care programmes www.henryreevebrigade.org

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