Diana Watch

So I had my swine flu vaccination on Tuesday and, unsurprisingly to anyone with a modicum of sense, not much happened. I had a bit of a sore arm and, as the Occupational Health Nurse Kerry said might happen when my body started to produce antibodies, I felt a bit hot and slightly achy during the early hours of Wednesday morning. To be honest I was reassured at the speed at which my body made me feel a little unwell.
I am telling you this because, as a not overly bright person, I had not considered what happens in my body when I had the jab but, because it was explained to me, it all made sense. Oh yes, that would be the standard response of the body to receiving a denatured virus (or part of a virus) or any other potential infection. It's not the infection; it's what the body does. But I wonder if those people who you meet (I met 2 yesterday) and claim that they had their flu jab and a day later they had the flu get this explained to them at the time of stabbing? The NHS can be a little poor at explaining itself sometimes.
Is it the lack of understanding of how our bodies function and how vaccines work that lets in all the anti-vaccine nonsense that is out there? Have you had a look at some of it? OMG! To the rational eye (most of me is rational but my eyes are especially so) it is so badly informed as to be hilarious but to the not so well informed it is spectacularly misleading and dangerous.
My favourite argument that the, umm....... let's for the sake of balance call them, charlatans and liars use is “Big Pharma is lying to you in order to separate you from your money”. Now I'm not here to defend GlaxoSmithKline and friends because they aren't the world’s most moral companies but I will say this, those who use this argument are always trying to sell you something of their own. Whether it be magnetic bracelets or a homeopathic swine flu vaccine(this lady, in the section called “Swine flu treatment and Flu Treatments”, even questions whether this strain of the virus is naturally occurring or created in a lab. She later goes for the complete set of nonsense cards as she claims that all vaccinations cause autism.), they are trying to get your credit card details.
If someone makes a claim on a website please don't just take them at face value, read around them a bit, learn something relevant. Now you are able to make a slightly more informed decision and if you are still open your wallet for snake oil sales men than it is Natural Selection at work. Intelligent design my arse.
If vaccines didn't work then the world would still be revenged by small pox and it's not. This may be simplistic but it makes the point rather clearly I think.
Please don't get me wrong, I am not criticising the people who buy this nonsense (well I am a bit), I understand their desire to be told that their incurable disease can be cured by some herbs and a wand. No, the people that I am having a go at are those who prey upon these desperate people with their many kinds of woo. Theirs is the cynical misinterpretation of science and logic in order to extract money from those who have been told that they have no hope and, in the case of Mediums, the recently bereaved. I mean, what sort of cunt tells the parent of a child who has died that they can talk to them but it will cost you money?

OMG! (sorry to use the expression again) They want to teach 5 year olds about sex and drugs! It can't be allowed to happen! And of course it isn't, despite what the Evening Standard or the Daily Express says.
The Government want to bring in a new plan for sex education in schools but it has annoyed the usual sort of people. This time, however, they are way out of touch. The new government plans, that do not include sex education for 5 year olds, have been discussed, and agreed with, many religious groups such as the Muslim Council for Britain and the Catholic Church.
So why bother complaining about them when the current lessons have worked so well. I mean, it's not as if we have the highest levels of teenage pregnancy in Europe or anything. Oh, now, wait a minute, we do.
The plans are to start teaching children, yes, as young as 5 (but as a vast number of parents have decided not to teach their children anything before they go to school such as how to use the toilet or cutlery it shows that some one should), about relationships in the most basic ways and learn about parts of their bodies. So what's wrong with that? Well, obviously nothing. Fuss for the sake of fuss. And the part about drug lessons for 5 year olds? I have no idea where that has come from. I was told about drugs and their dangers at school, were you?
The argument against seem to be that if we tell children about sex they want to do it. Interesting point. We don't tell children about smoking but they still want to do that and that is because they see others doing it. Our world is all about sex. Sex sells and lots of people want us to buy their stuff. We are surrounded by sexual images all the time so it is no wonder that younger and younger children find it interesting.
Let us have a look at the statistics from a country that teaches abstinence shall we? After years of falling, the teenage birth-ratein the US went up between 2005-2007, it is the highest in the western world. Many blame the “abstinence only” sex education bought in by the Bush Administration for this rise. Young people will have sex, we need to except this as fact, and what we need to do is to make sure that they have the knowledge to do it safely. Proper facts, sensibly discussed. Internet porn and playground chat is not a really that helpful.

We're going to be part of Europe, oh we're going to be part of Europe and if you don't like you won't get to vote on it anyway. Ha Ha Ha Ha.
Czech president Vaclav Klaus has ratified the Lisbon Treaty. This means that it will come in to force on December 1st. As you can imagine this had annoyed our right-wing press quite a lot and has pleased me so much.
One of the purposes of the treaty (apart from the streamlining of decision making stuff) is so that Europe can keep up with China and the USA who look like they could form a G2. The 2 superpowers trading as superpowers and leaving out the rest of the world. I'm not so keen on that as others seems to be. We need to do everything we can to stop this from happening. If we don't, the UK will become some economic backwater with no one taking any notice of us at all.


The Award For Answering a Question that Simply No One Was Asking,

This has to go to the Daily Star that bought us the Headline “Is Maddie a Muslim?” Way to link missing girl and disliked and misunderstood religion there.

The Award For Heart Warming Story of the Week,

The Actress Kate Winslet has won a libel case against the Daily Mail. Is there anything sweeter than a sentence that ends “ has won a libel case against the Daily Mail”? I don't think so.
They had printed an article disputing the amount of exercise that she did, well they didn't dispute it, they said that she lied when she said in an interview with Elle magazine, "I don't go to the gym because I don't have time, but I do Pilates workout DVDs for 20 minutes or more every day at home." How could they possibly know? No, really? How could they? They are quite obviously making stuff up. Why would they bother? Because they are unpleasant people, that's why.
Believe it or not, with every day that passes my views about the Daily Mail harden. With every hate filled, factually incorrect article that they print. I hate everyone that works there. They are responsible for crap that they print. Every single one of them. They cannot us the Nuremberg defence. By that I mean the “I was only following orders” defence rather than the “pawns and a rook” opening set of moves invented by Franz Nuremberg, Chess Grandmaster, in 1923, a chequered board genius and completely fiction character, made up for the propose of this joke. I want to make it clear that I'm not comparing them to actual Nazi's, just mentioning the excuse.
This week they published an article about an Asylum seeker dying in the back of a lorry and later in the day they had to remove most of the comments because, even they had been moderated by the paper, some people found them offensive. Now remember that this was cleared by the paper, one of the comments was, “one down, many more to go”
There is also an article by AN Wilson which described all scientists as arrogant. I'm not going to talk about the article because others have done it more eloquently then I ever could. It then pointed out, for some completely unknown reason, that another person who completely believed in science was Hitler. It also had a nice big picture of the moustachioed socio-path but later in the day the paper removed this picture. There is a very good article on the Poddelusion podcast about AN Wilson and his hypocrisy, I.E. comparing scientists to Hitler whilst he believes in Eugenics, having called for a woman to be forcibly sterilised in an article earlier this year.
One of the things that really annoys me about the paper is their lack of commitment to being offensive. A few complaints and they take stuff down. So do they really believe in the things that their own Journalists and Columnists are writing? I don't know but they are spectacularly inconsistent.

Sorry, I've been a bit ranty again this week. I will try and be concise and funny again next week.
For those who are wondering, the cat is still struggling on. Her kidneys my not be working but no one seems to have told her. She seems to be coping ok.
Hope you all have a nice week.