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A Tory MP has claimed NHS over-crowding could be solved by doctors using astrology to treat patients.

David Tredinnick said consulting the stars would "take huge pressure off doctors" and predicts astrology will "have a role to play in healthcare."

The MP for Bosworth in Leicestershire also admitted he had prepared astrological charts for fellow MPs.

In an interview with this month's Astrological Journal, the controversial MP said: "There would be a huge row over resources.

"However, I do believe that astrology and complementary medicine would help take the huge pressure off doctors.

"Ninety per cent of pregnant French women use homeopathy.

"Astrology is a useful diagnostic tool enabling us to see strengths and weaknesses via the birth chart.

"And, yes, I have helped fellow MPs. I do foresee that one day astrology will have a role to play in healthcare."

He added that opponents to astrology were "bullies", saying: "Astrology offers self-understanding to people.

"People who oppose what I say are usually bullies who have never studied astrology.

"They never look at it. They are absolutely dismissive. Astrology may not be capable of passing double-blind tests but it is based on thousands of years of observation.

"Hippocrates said, 'A physician without a knowledge of astrology has no right to call himself a physician,'

"Astrology was until modern times part of the tradition of medicine. I think it is a great pity that so many scientists today are dismissive of right-side brain energy, such as intuition.

"People such as Professor Brian Cox, who called astrology 'rubbish' have simply not studied the subject.

"The BBC is quite dismissive of astrology and seeks to promote the science perspective and seems always keen to broadcast criticisms of astrology."

Bizarrely, Tredinnick, 65, who is chairman of the All-Party Group for Integrated Healthcare, went on to say people who opposed astrology were "racist".

He said: "The opposition (to astrology) is based on what I call the SIP formula - superstition, ignorance, and prejudice.

"It tends to be based on superstition, with scientists reacting emotionally, which is always a great irony.

"They are also ignorant, because they never study the subject and just say that it is all to do with what appears in the newspapers, which it is not, and they are deeply prejudiced, and racially prejudiced, which is troubling."

Reminds me of Marabel Morgan's 1973 book The Total Woman. Morgan was in the social circle of the wives of Miami Dolphins football players and witnessed how a large percentage of these pampered young wives were destroying their marriages by turning into slovenly nags, so she wrote an advice book teaching her friends two things.

The first was time management. Hey girls: get your small half of the division of labor within your marriages done early, so you don't feel unhappy and bitchy about cleaning, grocery shopping, cooking etcetera on account of only getting it done at the last minute and under pressure. Get your stuff done early and you can feel great about yourselves while you go about your "me" time shoe-shopping or whatever, instead of feeling guilty about getting nothing done all day.

The second was to tell these women that in their conflicts with their husbands, THEY were the problem, not the husbands. These pampered young wives were always trying to vie for power in their relationships by doing stupid things like withholding sex because their husband hadn't taken out the trash yet. They were following female instincts to find grounds on which to see themselves as wronged, which they would then try to use as leverage. In short, these wives were not self-controlled and needed a man to control them, to not tolerate their bitchiness, but how many men are up to that without getting pissed off and alienated? These guys were stud athletes. That didn't make them extraordinary men who had any special talent for dealing with irrationally demanding women.

So Morgan tried to teach the women how to control themselves. She told them not to try to gain and use manipulative power in their marriages but do the opposite. Instead of holding back affection until they got what they wanted the wives were advised to unilaterally disarm: to give freely and generously, to stop nagging, to be hot for sex regardless of what else was going on the the relationship, and it worked.

All these wives discovered that it had indeed been them who was the problem. When they became forthcoming and generous their husbands did not grab the offered territory and demand still more. They didn't become oppressive. Instead they became MORE willing to do their part of the household division of labor. They reciprocated, and were just happy that their wives were not being bitches anymore, making them want to be with their wives more and make their wives happy.

The feminists absolutely hated it. The idea that women were the problem, not men, went against all of their ideology. But there is obviously a lot of truth to it: in very many cases women ARE the problem, and for that large fraction of cases the advice to stop being a bitch is important wisdom. Neither does it do any harm to women who aren't bitches to see someone lay out the ways in which a lot of other women ruin their marriages.

Then there are the feminists, that small minority of women who embrace self-destructive bitchiness, who don't want to be givers and don't want other women to be givers, but want all women to be as demanding and stingy as possible. That's their fight against men. They are in a constant tug of war.