Dear All,

I wish you a happy start to the New Year and the rest of 2008.

This is in response to Rod's News Update sent from "Independent
Electrosensitivity UK" (25.12.07) "Internal strife and Going Forward
in 2008" newsletter that he has emailed around his list of ES related
contacts.

I am very sorry to any and all of you who have been involved or caught
in the cross-fire regarding ElectroSensitivity UK. I know many of you
are puzzled by what is happening - as am I. I have done my very best
to keep out of it all as I have nothing to do with ES-UK other than
support my wife, Jean, in the hard unpaid work she does to keep
everything going. However, this latest newsletter from Rod was
sufficiently pejorative to us both that I feel hurt and would like to
address some points that I believe are grossly misleading.

This is my "take" on what has been happening regarding the limited
details that I know. There are various legal things going on at
present that only the Trustees, their legal advisors and Rod are aware
of. In time, when the issues are resolved, I imagine more details will
be made public.

I have been working tirelessly promoting a more precautionary approach
to EMF/EMR exposure since my first experiences in the 1980s with the
Greenham Common women who were "zapped" with experimental pulsed
microwave weapons by the US military (yes, this did actually happen).
In the 1990s, while working on the development of electronic
equipment, it became clear to me that I had developed ES and I now
have to screen my environment to keep my EMF and microwave exposure to
a minimum. Having helped to start and run Powerwatch for about 15
years we felt, in 2003, that the increasing numbers of
electrosensitive people would be much better supported by an
independent organisation set up purely to do this. That could be a
Charity and apply to charitable trusts for funds.

Jean proposed this idea of the ElectroSensitivity UK Charity and we
encouraged Rod, who was struggling to find paid work at the time, to
have a go at making it happen so that he could get really involved in
an initiative that would be genuinely supportive and helpful to those
that we had a lot of sympathy and time for.

The requirements for a Charity to be Registered included, at that
time, having £1000 in the bank. Jean contributed £667 from our joint
account (which is still in ES-UK) and Rod contributed £333 as a loan
which he later reclaimed. Rod, who was effectively unemployed at the
time, helped to register the charity with Jean, Dr David Dowson and
Professor Denis Henshaw as Trustees. Rod was then paid to be a part-
time Administrator. To begin with, it worked excellently, with Rod
tirelessly spending a lot of time working very hard publicly and
behind the scenes to do all that he could do.

The problems in 2007 were partly caused by getting a lottery grant to
perform very specific functions for the charity. Sadly, I understand
that this work was not being done, which caused those involved with
the charity a fair amount of concern as the welfare of ES-UK has
always been the top priority.

In the early summer the Trustees decided that the best way to move
forward was to get some extra trustees in order to get a broader base
to support the Charity and help develop a more professional approach
that would be taken seriously by Government. I know Jean had wished to
resign to free up more time for our family, but she was asked by the
expanded number of Trustees to become Chair for one year to provide
continuity. I know this because Jean asked me how I felt about her
taking this on.

Rod was asking for more paid hours and other resources. Instead of
funding this, the Trustees decided to lighten Rod's workload by
redistributing some of the tasks (like fund raising and writing the
Newsletter) to volunteers, enabling him to manage within his allocated
hours. Jean, as Chair of Trustees, then wrote to Rod with the changes
that the Trustees had proposed, requesting a meeting with Rod to
discuss the changes. He responded that he 'had lost trust' and
repeatedly refused to discuss this and everything went downhill from
then on. It is a legal responsibility of the Trustees of a Charity to
spend public grant money for the purposes for which it was given and
for any paid (and other) workers to follow the Trustees guidance.

However, Rod felt that he was being marginalised and forcibly removed
from his position in the charity - I understand this because up until
a few months ago I considered myself a long-term personal friend of
Rod's and have been in contact with him and others since the problems
arose. Despite what Rod writes, I have never been a formal part of ES-
UK. However, from the sidelines I have always supported him and ES-UK
and I was really keen for a way to be found for Rod to be able to
continue doing work for ES-UK and contacted him twice to encourage him
to talk to Jean about the proposed changes.

Having repeatedly refused to negotiate the changes requested by the
Trustees, Rod was given notice of dismissal from paid work. He then
filed an official complaint about ES-UK with the Charity Commission
for 'maladministration' and 'conflicts of interest'. The Commission
dismissed the initial allegations, but then someone additionally
reported that the ES-UK website was advertising the Electrosmog
Detector and so they are now looking at that. The only person who has
ever put anything on the ES-UK website is Rod. No-one else (certainly
with connections with Powerwatch, EMFields or Sensory Perspective)
have had any influence whatsoever on the content of the
http://www.electrosensitivity.org.uk website.

There are a number of statements directed at me (such as my apparent
involvement in the running of the charity) which Rod will not drop,
and these are falsifications that make it very hard to rebuild the
trust which has been so damaged. As far as I can remember, Rod has not
actually asked me for any scientific advice regarding ES in the last
three years. The Panorama programme, that Rod seems to be claiming
some initiative for, did not come about due to his influence. My
featured part in the programme, measuring of the signals from the GSM
mast and from the school WiFi units, was cleared by the recent
complaints judgement as being fair, correct and not misleading. I was
not paid any expenses for the time or actual costs I put into
supporting the making of the programme which moved the issues of WiFi
and ES into the national headlines. In fact no-one involved with
Powerwatch gets paid anything for their Powerwatch work. I personally
put months of unpaid work behind the scenes each year pushing for a
more precautionary approach to EMFs, especially on the key working
groups that I am members of (like SAGE and the HPA EMF DG). There are
practical limits to what any few people can do.

This whole recent ES-UK happenings fill me with great sadness. I
believe that it has been a completely unnecessary episode which has
lost me a friend (who goes back decades) and has greatly damaged the
public perception of those (including Rod) trying very hard to support
those with a currently unacknowledged condition. Rod has now chosen to
start his own ES-UK enterprise as a business - using the existing
Charity's name as he states in his newsletter. Apparently, I am told
that this is legal as the Charity did not register its name also as a
business name. His new look ES-UK is a registered commercial company,
and he is in complete control of what he does with it, so hopefully
this freedom will allow him to be helpful to many in the future.

I expect that the ES-UK Charity Trustees will put out a statement
explaining their version of what has been happening. I am told that
they have been legally advised not do this until the various issues
with Rod Read have been settled.

It would be great to believe that in the long term everyone could work
together for those that really matter: the real people that suffer
with modern electrical pollution in their every day lives and
appreciate the support that we can all give.

There is now a new official ES-UK website at http://www.es-uk.info/

Best Regards,
Alasdair Philips
http://www.powerwatch.org.uk