"Crazy pilot" forced out of cockpit by co-pilot

No, it would appear this is NOT an early "April Fools" day jest, but a deadly-serious and no doubt (for those involved or who know the stricken pilot) a very troubling event:



According to The Telegraph: "Passengers on-board a US flight from New York to Las Vegas are forced to subdue the plane's captain after he suffered a "meltdown" and began shouting about a "bomb"."
- a most alarming event and illustrative perhaps of the fact that human mental stability can be somewhat fragile. There but for the grace of ...

"Anticipatory" medical care for the elderly in a Nairn GP practice

Research into end-of-life medical treatment for elderly patients by Nairn and Ardersier GP practice involved the creation of "anticipatory care plans" for 100 high-risk patients.

This sounds all very fine and dandy, but trying to get the medical and care services merely to take more than a passing interest in the care and medical needs of a frail elderly neighbour, also in Nairn but registered with a different GP practice, over the past few weeks has been frustratingly different; one almost gets the impression that they would prefer that she drop down dead to save them the bother (and cost) of intervention. So much for high-falutin' research when contrasted with not-so-'Best Practice'!

Such action, little as it is so far, has only happened because of the intervention of several concerned friends (me and another in the main) intervening direct with Social Services to put a spur to their flanks! Not happy!

UN-BUH-LIEV-ABLE !!

OK, I've been silent here for a few weeks (having too much fun whilst on my current sojourn in Spain - plus possibly some very good personal news - more later perhaps, if things continue to develop positively), but this is really too interesting (and gruesome) not to pass on:



- this image-grab gives the salient details:

- read more from the Las Vegas Review-Journal here

There but ...

(thru Kenneth in the (212), here)

Blanket ban on blood donations by homosexual men to be lifted

The blanket ban on blood donations by homosexual and bisexual men is to be lifted from 7th November 2011 in England, Wales and Scotland; not [yet] in Northern Ireland, though.

Whilst this is a definite move in the right direction, there is a big caveat attached to the relaxation of the ban which makes me wonder if it is being made merely to comply with the strict letter of EU anti-discrimination regulations rather than to effect any practical change. The change applies only to gay men who [say they] have not had anal or oral sex with another man in the twelve months prior to the donation. Even those in long-term committed monogamous relationships are not exempt from this 12-month rule. What is really being said is that a man (whether homosexual or bisexual) must abstain from having sex with another male for 12 months, but of course the bisexual man is in no way banned from donating if he has had sex with a woman during those 12 months.

Is this in any way realistic, quite apart from whether it is discriminatory or not?

Nor of course are sexually promiscuous supposedly heterosexual men or women in any way banned from donating blood, however unsafe their sexual practices may be.

Another factor that is crucial, whoever is donating blood, is honesty and truthfulness. How is any verification to be carried out, in a practical sense, of whether a man's declaration (whether homosexual, bisexual or indeed heterosexual) that they have not had sex with another man during the preceding 12 months is factually correct? How has it been possible, until now, to verify a delcaration from any man that they have never had sex with another man, to comply with the current blanket ban.

What really needs to happen is that ALL potential donors should be quizzed about their sexual history, whilst accepting that some people (whether homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual, gay, lesbian, male or female) will not be completely open and honest. Who is to know whether a purportedly heterosexual man (or woman) has not had unsafe sex of one kind or another whilst away from home on a business-trip or a vacation? And how likely is it that a purportedly happily-married person will admit willingly to such unsafe behaviour unless there is compelling evidence which makes it impossible to cover up?

Forgive me, but I think this change is cosmetic and with little real substance in any practical sense.

The cleanliness of Moroccan toilets - and poetry, too!

I came across a most interesting article in the Big Brother Maroc blog this evening, linking to a website there devoted to the notion that lavatories, toilets or whatever 'euphemism' you wish to employ, do not have to be disgusting, but too often are. It aims to focus attention on really crass examples and thereby encourage the operators of these locales to clean up their act. I post two photographs below, the first completely disgusting and the second not (it would seem) bad at all, to show that filth does not have to be the norm:

The filthy toilet on the train between
Casablanca and Mohammed V Airport



The pretty clean-looking
Cervantes Institute, Casablanca



A long time ago I lived in Morocco for a couple of years and have been back a few times in later years, so am always interested when I hear mention of the country as I enjoyed living there a lot. My memories from there, so far as toilets are concerned, range from the perfectly pleasant to the completely awful, but in all honesty the same could be said about many (if not all) of the countries I have lived in or visited. I do recall that the male staff toilets in our Casablanca office were particularly disgusting (on one occasion a 30 feet section of drain had to be replaced because it had become blocked with - well suffice to say it wasn't pretty! The real problem was an over-enthusiastic use of toilet paper - the consumption of this commodity there was truly extraordinary, for a staff complement of only about 55 in all.), but on the other hand other 'traditional' toilets there were often perfectly clean, if 'exotic', for someone used to a sit-down lavatory. However I did spend a day in what might laughably be called an hotel room in the southern Moroccan town of Tan Tan (map) which remains to this day (36 or 37 years later) the most awful I have ever experienced - straw-filled bolster mattress, no sheets, just a rather soiled-looking blanket; it didn't do me much harm though, as I'm still around to tell the tale! Tan Tan is about 350 Km south of Agadir, itself about 360 Km south of Casablanca, where I lived.

I think this idea of highlighting unsavoury toilets could usefully be copied for other countries - it would provide a useful service for residents and travellers alike and perhaps encourage operators to do better.

Oh, the poetry! In the Big Brother Maroc blog I found this sentence in the relevant article particularly delightful and expressive:
"En plus, pour vos soirées ou sorties, n'hésitez pas à consulter ce site pour éviter les endroits les moins propices à notre confort sphinctérien."
(In addition, for your evening celebrations or your excursions, don't forget to consult this website so you may avoid places less conducive to your sphincteric comfort.)- don't you just love it? There are a lot more turns of phrase in that blog that have brought a smile to my face!

Gates Foundation pledges USD10bn over 10 years for vaccine research

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has today pledged to provide USD10bn over 10 years for vaccine research, in a speech at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting. Amazing - and pretty wonderful, too. It is good to know that there are positive things going on the world.

I'm currently watching (as I have been since 9.30am) former Prime Minister Tony Blair give his evidence before the Chilcot Inquiry; I'm not so sure any of this exercise is particularly 'helpful', other than as a political 'point-scoring' exercise.

World AIDS Day 2009

Today, 1st December, is World AIDS Day.

In remembrance of those lost to AIDS.



With hope for those living with HIV and AIDS today.

What was the point of getting consultants to report on the NHS?

Before we get on to discussing the consultants' report on the NHS, a preamble. I find it pretty bizarre that any employer, in this case the British government, pays out good money (our money of course) for an external consultancy firm to provide recommendations for the NHS. Particularly a Labour government. How likely was it, do you think, that a Labour government was ever going to accept a report from a firm such as McKinsey? Did the government think McKinsey might recommend staff increases?

The NHS is apparently the largest employer in the world. Many people (and politicians wanting to get elected) are happy to trot out the mantra, as Health minister Mike O'Brien does:

"... In core frontline services like maternity, nursing and primary care we need more staff rather than fewer."

- without then going on to look at the obvious corollary: what's to happen with levels of non-frontline activities. Quite the contrary! In the sentence immediately preceding the one I quote above, Mike O'Brien opines:

"The government does not believe the right answer to improving the NHS now or in the future is to cut the NHS workforce.

So what, according to you Mr O'Brien, is the right answer? Bearing in mind that the government brief to the consultants was to "come up with proposals for how savings could be made". There is silence from Mike O'Brien on this vital matter, except to put the kybosh on the whole report thus:

"Ministers have rejected the suggested proposals in the McKinsey report and there are no plans to adopt these proposals in the future."

OK, so another tens/hundreds(?) of thousands of Pounds of our money down the drain! No surprise there then, that's what this government specialises in - squandering money it does not have.

The context of this ridiculous exercise in self-delusion is electoral politics - no politician has the courage (whether in the governing Labour Party, or the likely future government of the Conservative Party) to state the obvious - that much of the waste that is said to exemplify the NHS is a function of its chronic over-manning, not its under-manning! Of course it needs to become 'more efficient' rather than simply indulge in yet more job-creation for the sake of it and think that this will solve the underlying problem, which is people working less-efficiently than they should be. For Gawd's sake, what planet do these people live on? No, the real reason for this determined myopia is that with a country mired deeply in recession and with an election inevitable within 9 months at the maximum, and with official unemployment figures already already rising rapidly (the 'dsguised' unemployment is already much greater and has been so for many years) the last thing an unpopular government needs is to accept a report which plans for an increase of 137,000 in unemployment numbers - for who else, even if there were not already a recession, would be likely to employ many of these people?

The whole mind-set which has blighted healthcare politics in the UK for decades is summed-up in these ridiculous statements from two of the 'unions' who effectively dictate to the Labour government (and in various ways to other political parties, too, in rather blunt terms) how this country's healthcare has to be run to avoid them 'cutting-up rough'. First from the self- acknowledged union, Unison, whose head of health, Karen Jennings, says:

"The McKinsey report comes up with the same old formulaic answers and their much-repeated mantra of job cuts as the answer to NHS savings. "There is no room for complacency in the NHS. We must constantly look for new ways to be efficient and to deliver better patient care."

- fair enough, in her first sentence she trots out her ideological objections to reducing employment levels, that much I understand, although I disagree fundamentally of course. But what does the obfuscatory second sentence mean? It seems to me to be trying to say a lot when it actually says almost nothing, other than that Ms Jennings is skilled in the art of meaningless verbiage masquerading as intelligent commentary.

Now on to that other 'union', the British Medical Association (BMA) which, despite its name which [deliberately?] suggests it is some kind-of quasi-official body is in fact a professional 'trade' body designed to protect the interests of medical practitioners of one kind or another as well as enforcing professional standards as the price of admittance to the 'club'. On the one had it does a lot of good, but ignore at your peril its naked self-interest on behalf of its members in other ways. At least Dr Mark Porter of the BMA is being intellectually honest when he stated clearly its official position:

"If implemented, these short-sighted proposals would have been disastrous. "We welcome the commitment given by the government that it has rejected them and does not see workforce cuts as the solution to the challenges facing the NHS."

This brings me to a question that I have for many years asked about the NHS. Does the National Health Service exist to provide medical care to the British people, or is its principal function to provide employment to the 1.3 or so million people employed by it? Of course even I would agree that the answer to this question has to be a combination of both to a certain extent, but I give definite priority to its basic function being to provide health services, whereas the 'unions' (and politicians, whether ideologically supportive or coerced by the electoral realities of a benefits-addicted electorate) seem to think it is basically a glorified 'make work' scheme.

John Appleby, chief economist at The King's Fund, basically talks about 'tractor production figures':

"I don't really see the necessity for actually cutting jobs, but I certainly do see the necessity for employees and the NHS overall to find new ways of working, being more productive, being more efficient."

However, Sir Gerry Robinson, a successful and apparently wealthy businessman, sums the whole issue up:

"You wonder at the mindset behind getting a report like that and then saying because it is not politically acceptable, we are not actually going to do anything with it," he told Radio 4's Today. "It's infuriating, the way the government handles the NHS and the way the opposition handles the game that gets played."

As he says, he saw an "enormous amount of waste" and [felt that] jobs should go (when he presented a BBC series about the NHS), saying that he was "infuriated" by yet another report, which cost a lot of money and "tells you the obvious". Quite!

Welcome to Britain and its crazy healthcare politics.

Sporadic posts, even more than usual recently, for the next few weeks

It is possible I shall not be blogging much over the next few weeks, or at least even less frequently than has been my habit of late. I have not been feeling well since the weekend and at lunch-time today I had a doctor's consultation to diagnose the problem. It took him less than 5 seconds to decide what is affecting me and prescribe the treatment.

My ailment is not, thank goodness, in any way life-threatening but it is painful and the parts of the body affected are rather scary to look at (as a rather unpleasant rash is very often one of the symptoms). Apart from a dull and pretty intense headache in my case, neuralgia is a feature of this ailment, although I have thankfully (so far) been spared the worst 'stabbing' pains, rather it is a severe tenderness of parts of my body. I have now commenced the course of treatment, which lasts for a week, and one must hope that the rash will slowly clear up over the course of a few weeks. It's far too soon to tell, but it seems that at my age the pain could potentially linger for some considerable time; I'll just have to hope I'm one of the lucky ones who escapes that particular burden after only a relatively brief period. So far, apart from the pain, it has made me somewhat listless and nauseous and not feeling much good for anything - not even for my occasionally obsessional blogging activities. Maybe I'll occupy my time with reading some of the books I'm either half-way through or those in my pile of 'to read' books I've yet to start. I may even pop into blogging from time to time if I'm feeling up to it.

PS/ I've diasbled comments and trackback links for this post.

Strokes and how to recognise the signs

The NHS has been running a couple of advertisements over the past week or so to highlight recognition signals for when someone is having a stroke. I've never seen a stroke happen, but I have seen the results on a number of occasions and, quite frankly, it can be terrifying, specially when the person involved was well-known to me before as someone who was bright, intelligent and quick-witted. I don't mind saying that having a major stroke, which didn't kill me outright, would be my own special idea of hell. I hope these two advertisements may help someone who witnesses one happening to recognise quickly what is going on and to give the sufferer the best possible chance at prompt medical treatment.

I am intrigued to know how they got the two actors to display such realistic facial traits - I imagine there is some element of image manipulation involved, but it is very clever. And frightening.

Scottish 'Government': more money than sense!! And peddler of 'propaganda'?

Where to begin with this?

Today I received a envelope, addressed to 'The resident', sent to one of my residences (OK, so shoot me! - lol) with the envelope helpfully marked 'THIS IS NOT A CIRCULAR' and bearing the legends of 'The Scottish Government' and 'NHS Scotland. Inside I find a letter which addresses me as 'Dear Sir or Madam'. There are two other enclosures within the envelope: firstly, and excitingly (I being of the 'Vicky'-type, aka 'Little Britain') a 'High Street Gift Voucher' for £5.00 (GB5.00) and a leaflet put out by something called the 'Scottish Centre for Social Research' and entitled 'The Scottish Health Survey'. We'll return to this a little later, never fear.

For the moment I want to focus on on the voucher for GBP5.00. It is headed up 'Love2shop' - they've got my number obviously! In any case it appears to be a perfectly valid voucher, which it seems I can spend at a variety of high street outlets (mentioned on the voucher are: Principles, HMV, Homebase, Boots, Virgin Megastores, Iceland, Woolworths, Wilkinson, River Island, Warehouse, WHSmith, H.Samuel, Focus, New Look, Carphone Warehouse, Halfords, Adams Kids, Comet, BHS, Mothercare, Waterstone's, and JJB) - it's even got a holographic logo on it and serial numbers on the back so I plan to go spend this money in the next few days; if these idiots are mad enough to squander our money (my taxes) in this way I'm unapologetic about recouping a very small small portion of this squandered money, To be quite honest I've never heard of a few of these outlets, but there are quite a few of the outlets named locally, so I won't find it too difficult.

Now, back to the leaflet accompanying the letter and shopping voucher! It explains that earlier surveys have been carried out in 1995, 1998 and 2003 and that from 2008 it will take place yearly. Apparently around 6,000 adults and 2,000 children are invited to take part each time. According to the letter I will be visited (or at least one of my addresses will be visited) in the 'next few days' by a named interviewer (whom I do not name here; she is, after all, just a 'paid lackey'). In any case the 'objectivity' of this whole exercise may be judged by perusing the 'Did you know?' section:
- A third of men and women think that their general health is 'very good';
- Around 1 in 5 men and women and just over 1 in 10 children eat five or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day;
- Around 3 in 10 men and women smoke cigarettes, smoking rates have been steadily declining since 1995;
- Younger adults are more likely to smoke, but older people who smoke tend to smoke more cigarettes per day;
- About 1 in 4 men drink more than 21 units of alcohol a week and about 1 in 6 women drink more than 14 units;
- Men spend an average of 7 hours per week being physically active and women spend and average of 5 hours;
- Men are more likely than women to take part in sport while women are more likely than men to do heavy housework;
- Three quarters of boys and nearly two-thirds of girls aged 2-15 spend at least an hour a day doing physical activities;
- About 2 in 5 men and women have a long-standing illness, this rises to 2 in 3 of those aged 75 and over.

Some of these statements may appear intrusive or controversial (many are both in my view) and the 'What are the questions about?' segment are, in my view, both facile and patronising.

I have not yet decided whether I shall meet with the person who is scheduled to visit me in the next few days. Meantime I must register my protest at the Scottish Executive's profligacy with taxpayers' money'- I doubt I am the only one who believes the Scottish Excecutive (aka 'Scottish Government') must have far too much money available if it can afford to send out GBP5.00 vouchers to all and sundry to try and persuade them to allow such intrusion and self-exposure to its agenda - ultimately it is taxpayers (such as me) who are paying for this largesse so it seems, apart from anything else, rather a 'circular' way of going about its business.

The sick mentality that guides the NHS

I just came across a letter from Ben Bradshaw MP, Minister of State for Health Services, to the Economist magazine and published in its 26th January edition - it has been lurking in one of my bags since leaving home and I only got around to perusing it last evening.

I can't find the letter in the online edition - perhaps I've not looked in quite the right place - so I'm going to quote parts of the lengthy second (and final) paragraph as what he writes there seems to me to encapsulate a lot of what is hateful about the mentality guiding the NHS:

"A fundamental principle of the NHS, supported by all political parties, is that treatment should be available to patients based on need and not on the ability to pay."

If you believe in the principle of socialised medicine provision, which I am not in any way sure that I do, then this seems inevitable. But for the sake of argument, let us suppose it is a sound way of doing things. What does it lead on to?

"Patients are, of course, entitled to seek private medical treatment if they so wish."

Now this is really decent of our political masters, isn't it!? They graciously accept that we have the right to deal with our own health care outside the NHS if we choose.

Of course, if you do take out private health insurance (as I and many others have) then it will cost you more than just the insurance premium. You will also pay a health insurance tax. So despite the seeming innocence of the 'State' permitting one to do something outside its control, they still want to punish you for doing so.

"Co-payments undermine the the principle of fair and equal treatment for all and risk creating a two-tier health service - one for those with the ability to pay and another for those that do not. Such a system would directly contravene the principles and values of the NHS."

When I read ridicuous communistic propaganda like this masquerading as a genuine concern with what is best for people concerned about their health I really feel like screaming and smashing some windows. Co-payments of various kinds have been a fundamental part, perhaps a regrettable part, of the NHS almost since its inception! Dental charges, charging for prescriptions and for various things connected with eye-care have a long history under the NHS. You can read a couple of websites which cover the topic in depth here (Citizens' Advice Bureau) and here (Socialist Health Association - not my usual reading, as you might rightly imagine!).

The pretence that the NHS is, or has mostly always been, 'free at the point of need' is fine as a slogan, but it has never been more than an aspiration because of these pesky little charges tagged on. Then of course come the exemptions from payment - adding a huge layer of bureaucracy to the whole edifice in order to administer them.

But of course these are not the co-payments which Mr Bradshaw is referring to, because all the others have become completely orthodox over many years. No, what M Bradshaw objects to is people paying for addtional drugs privately, not available under the NHS, to enhance the NHS treatment they are getting for illnesses such as cancer. Basically what he wishes to establish as a principle is that if someone gets additional treatment privately for something that they are already being treated for under the NHS, then that NHS treatment also becomes chargeable! Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous in all your life? Or unfair?! Or mean-spirited?! Or simply wrong-headed?! What principle exactly is Mr Bradshaw trying to protect? If NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) say a drug may not be prescribed under the NHS, ostensibly for reasons of lack of efficacy, but in reality as a cost-containment measure, what possible harm can it do for someone to use their own money to buy the drug? And in any case the patient would still have paid his/her contributions to the NHS over the years so why shouldn't they continue to receive the treatment they other wise would have if they hadn't opted for additional private treatment. It's not as if the government is going to offer them some kind of refund for treatment it will thus be with-holding.

What it really boils down to is the 'State' saying to citizens (i.e. we helots) that if everyone cannot have something, then none may have it. Or at least not without suffering enormous additional cost.

The sooner the State gets out of the business of directly influencing medical treatments, or teaching or any other state-provided service for that matter, which are more properly the province of relevant professionals, the better it will be. Prescription charges are a very long-standing form of co-payment; why is some poor lady who wants to spend her own money on a drug like Avastin being punished for doing so? Logically, if you follow this line of reasoning, I should be charged for all my doctor visits (very rare as a matter of fact) whenever I pay for a prescription for my anti-eczema ointment. That's how illogical and mean-spirited and condescending is Mr Bradshaw's whole sad premise.

Are we helots or free individuals?

The UK Goverment has announced that it favours changing the law to make a presumption of consent to harvesting of human body parts after death, unless specific prior opposition had been registered or the deceased's family objects. At present only those who who have given prior consent may have their organs harvested after death, although this is sometimes thwarted, I understand, by the objections of family members. See (*) at the end of this article, too.

I have no personal objection to donating my organs and indeed have carried an organ donor card for many years, although I have not added my name formally to any 'Organ Donor Register' as this is presumably a centralised register and I have deep misgivings about the whoe concept of centralised registers for this or any other purpose (e.g. Personal Data Register, NHS online centralised records).

Now I learn that the Scottish Executive (aka 'Scottish Government') is sympathetic to the change suggested by the UK Government.

My position is very clear. I think I have the sole right to decide what will happen to my body parts after I die. I resent strongly the notion that if I were to object to the harvesting of my organs after my death (which as it so happens, I don't) that I must make a positive declaration to that effect. My body belongs to me, not to the State and the presumption is and should remain that no harvesting of body parts can occur without my specific prior consent. Similarly I will choose if and when I wish to end my life (since 1961 suicide has no longer been a crime), provided I am physically able to carry it out (assisting another to commit suicide remains a crime).

The reasoning behind criminalising assisting another to commit suicide is that there is a risk that the person's 'loved ones' might collude in a suicide because they may have a material interest in the person's death, or otherwise gain from it (for example a carer who is member of the family would be 'free' to pursue his/her own interests if there was no longer a requirement to care for the fmaily member who wishes to commit suicide). There is also the fear that 'loved ones' might tacitly, or even explicitly, encourage a relative to commit suicide or cause the person to feel they were doing the 'right thing' by committing suicide.

I'm afraid that whilst I think the effects of this law are sometimes harsh, specially when the person who wishes to commit suicide is physically unable through disablement or infirmity to carry it out without assistance it is probably a necessary precaution in most cases to prevent abuse. Notwithstanding this, I believe that the Swiss organisation Dignitas does valuable and worthwhile work; the link is to the part of the site which is designed to inform people from the UK about the organisation, as the main site is in German. A BBC article about this organisation is here.

To get back to the subject at hand, I think there is the potential for abuses with the harvesting of organs. Of course, we are told that body parts would only be harvested upon death (excepting the case of organ donations made of ogans which are in pairs (e.g. eyes, kidneys) where the donor can survive on one remaining organ, but what if the person was very old, or severely disabled, whereas the potential donee was young and otherwise physically fit? What if the person being looked at as a donor was regarded as in some way less worthy then the potential donee? Far-fetched, you may argue, but it is only a couple of weeks ago that the Prime MInister suggested that people could be refused treatment on the NHS if it was felt they should lose weight, stop smoking or take exercise. The fact that such people were most likely helping to pay for the NHS through their taxes seemed an irrelevant detail! How hard, in such circumstances, would medical personnel try to keep a potential donor alive, specially if the official attitude of the government is to make a presumption that body parts may be harvested unless the donor had lodged specific objection beforehand.

Many will say I am being alarmist. However, it is only a few years ago that it was discovered, accidentally, that for years doctors in various hospitals around the country had been taking organs from dead infants for medical experimentation, without the permission of parents, a matter which was discovered only when the body of an infant had to be exhumed after burial and it was found to be missing most of the vital organs. I think the scandal, when it was exposed, happened to involve a hospital in Liverpool, but was later found to have occurred elsehwere, too.

Basically what all this boils down to is individual liberty. This Government seeks to take unto itself the power of life and death over all citizens. However, the Government is only granted temporary powers by citizens at an election. I think the Government, indeed Parliament itself, would be going way beyond its mandate to change the law to permit post-mortem abstraction of body parts without the specific approval of the donor or, in some curcumstances, members of the deceased's family.

(*) A horrid aspect of this whole issue is the way that the Government's proposals are framed is to imply that a person is somehow lacking in civic-spiritedness by declining to agree to donate body parts after death, by stressing the long waiting-lists of potential donees awaiting body parts and organs. I may feel, and in fact I do feel, that it would be humane on my part to permit my body parts or organs to be taken after my death, if they could help someone else to live longer or in better health. However I would absolutely refuse to feel in any way guilty if I chose not to have this attitude and I object strongly to the moral blackmail being pushed down our throats by the government and the way this is being reported in the media, particularly the BBC, in its reporting today on this matter! It really is just like some of the public 'hate' or 'love' sessions described in George Orwell's novel 1984, where citizens were expected to follow the latest policy changes of 'Big Brother', however quixotic. On this subject in general a lot of the news reporting on the BBC of late has veered away from the delivery of news to the promulgation of propaganda on behalf of the government under the guise of 'manufactured' news stories.

Red wine in moderation 'good for the heart', but may cause bowel cancer

After my previous post, on the risks associated with of being left-handed, I come across another article in today's Telegraph which takes aim at the simple pleasures that millions of people enjoy. For years I've been reading that a glass of red wine a day is helpful in reducing the risk of heart disease; now it seems that a couple of [large] glasses a day increase the risk of getting bowel cancer by 25 per cent. Just as with the schizophrenia report, though, the person behind this study, Prof Tim Key, Cancer Research UK epidemiologist and deputy director of the cancer epidemiology unit in Oxford, is quoted as saying, to try and put some kind of perspective on this alarmist report:

"The research shows quite clearly that the more alcohol you drink the greater your risk of bowel cancer. "The increase in risk is not large but it is important that people understand they can reduce their risk of a number of different cancers - including bowel cancer - by cutting down on alcohol."

On balance I think I shall continue to enjoy my occasional (not necessarily daily) couple of glasses of wine. Obviously I don't want to get a disease which is likely to cause pain and probably premature death, but on the other hand I don't particularly wish to live for ever - I'll take my chances with a bit of moderate enjoyment.

Lefties more at risk of being complete 'wackos' ...

... of course that's not precisely what the study which the Telegraph reports on has to say. What it does say is that the left-handed have a slightly greater propensity to develop schizophrenia than the right-handed. On the other hand the leader of the study, Dr Clyde Francks of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, is quoted as saying, no doubt in an attempt to soothe the feelings of persecution (recurrent, heh) which were welling up in me when I read of this:

"People really should not be concerned by this result. There are many factors which make individuals more likely to develop schizophrenia and the vast majority of left-handers will never develop a problem. We don't yet know the precise role of this gene."

- OK, OK, the twitching has [mostly] stopped! In case you have not picked up on it yet, I am left-handed. My, my, and I had always attributed my quirky brilliance to being a sinistral; maybe I need to count myself lucky not have exhibited other traits of this 'condition'!
(thru Mr Eugenides)

Atkins Low Carbohydrate Diet - Weeks 140 to 195

I am just coming to the end of week 195 and tomorrow will commence week 196. Normally I would have written this entry around mid-February, but I just didn't get around to it. A complication (although a pleasurable one) is that this is the first winter I am spending in Spain. I left home on 11th January, arriving here in Spain on the 19th and will leave here again on 11th April and expect to return home on the 21st. The 'complication' is that I have neither a weighing scale nor a measuring tape, so I am unable to say precisely how I am doing, however I will give an honest (warts and all) appraisal of where I think I am.

If you would like to read the remainder of this entry please click here, when you will be taken to the latest post in my Atkins diary within my main website. If you wish to read more about my experiences on the 'Atkins' diet there is a permanent link in the right hand column under the 'Atkins Diet' heading.