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.

Diana Watch (on tour)

Usually she just lies there in the faecal position. Today Martyn is in Kent. In the front line, so to speak. It’s like war reporting this. Let’s get it out of the way at the beginning because I know that it has become a little dull to hear me go on and on about Israel, it has been reflected in the readership numbers, but at the time of typing there is talk of a ceasefire. Much to the relief of the UN, as well as the Palestinians, who have had 2 schools and their headquarters in Gaza bombed, possibly with white phosphorus bombs, which are illegal. My point is this, what has Israel achieved? They claim that their goals for a ceasefire have been met but Hamas are still firing rockets at them, so that doesn’t seem to be one of them. Is it suspicious that they started talking about a ceasefire on the day that George W Bush left the White House? The timing is also significant in Israel because they have an election coming up. You don’t want to go into an election actually at war but going into it just after a war that you can claim you have won and see how seriously we take National Security, the only thing to be heard saying this season for any serious politician, does give you a reasonable platform. To claim that the war was merely electioneering would be a little cynical but hey….

It seems that no one listens to me. This will not come as a surprise to anyone but me. I turned on my television this week to see Iggy Pop advertising insurance. And after my “why do famous people do adverts” rant, oh how the mighty have fallen and while we are at it, The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Charlatans seem to have licensed their music for ads. It makes me sad but I suppose you have to make money. One other point, on the ghastly “Injury lawyers 4 U” adverts it is claimed that “they are real lawyers”. Good, I’m glad to hear it, although it is sort of what I would expect from a company of lawyers, even if they do use text speak in their company name. Oh and is that a vulture that appears over their name at the end of the ad? I don’t suppose for a minute that they have that level of self awareness but it would be nice.

Environment news now and I think we should start with a positive story from India. Delhi has banned the plastic bag and they’ve really gone for it as well, no silly little punishment for them, oh no, up to 5 years in jail. One of the reasons that they have banned them is because discarded bags were blocking the drains and this is remarkable unhelpful in a monsoon. They are not the first to ban them though; Rwanda, Bhutan and Bangladesh are also in on the act. So if some of the worlds poorest countries can do it, take this bold step into a plastic free future, why can’t we? Well the reason is Gordon Brown. And man who really doesn’t understand. This week has seen one of more odd announcements from this government, one that will haunt them until they are no longer in charge. We shall have a third runway at Heathrow. Why? Do we really need it? It is estimated that it will only generate £42 million a year which really isn’t that much. I have heard at least 2 government spokesmen saying that the 3rd runway will help us be more competitive on the other side of the recession and at least 1 said that it will help Britain’s (how will it help Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?) infrastructure post-recession. Now the likelihood is that they won’t cut the first sod until 2012 and it won’t be finished until, at the earliest, 2020! How long do they think the recession is going to last?
Greenpeace is doing its bit in order to help hold things up. It has purchased a small piece of land within the area that will be needed for the expansion and is currently dividing the ownership up too as many people as possible. At the moment it is owned by about 12000 people and Greenpeace are going to start offering parts to foreign people in an attempt to slow down the compulsory purchase order process even more.
What the government has succeeded in doing is providing it critics with a really big, oily stick with which they can hit it every time they try and do something meaningful for the environment. Whatever suggestions they make we can shout back “Heathrow”. They have managed to shoot themselves in the foot so badly that now the Tories look like the environmentally friendly party. There should be a joke about recycled ideas here but I can’t be bothered. They took the opportunity that was presented to them and grasped it with a big tree hug and proudly announced their own plan to save the planet, some of which was very good, tidal power, an “intelligent” power grid and micro-generation (see I told you it was the way forward) but some of it was utter pish. Plugs all round London to recharge electric cars despite the fact that electric cars are rubbish and take hours to charge, for instance. Hydrogen fuel cells are the future anyway as you can fill them up like a petrol car. The government messed so badly that David Cameron could vote against getting rid of old style tungsten bulbs (as he did this week) and still look like the hippy. A quick fact for you, 14% of all the electricity generated in this country goes on lighting. Think of the power that could be saved of we all switched to low energy light bulbs? Even the Daily Mail agrees with that.

Let’s do some awards,

The Award For Fantastic Bit of Flying of the Week,

This goes to Chesley Sullenberger who managed to not hit anything in New York after taking off from LaGuardia Airport, getting hit by a flock of Geese, losing both engines and then somehow managing to land safely on the Hudson River. Take off to landing took 7 minutes. Lets be honest, we take our pilots for granted but when it comes down to it, they do a remarkable job.

The Award For Really Embarrassing Thing of the Week,

There really is no competition for this week; it really has to go to Kate Winslet and her awful, awful acceptance speech at the Golden Globes when she got her gong for being best at pretending to be someone else.



The Award For Funniest Art Instillation That Embarrassed A Government of the Week,

“And so we are going to be the EU presidential country for 6 months, how should we celebrate such a thing?” “I know, sculpture!” Unveiled this week was a sculpture to challenge European stereotypes. It was suppose to be by 27 different artists doing a bit about their own country, it turns out, however, that it was all done by one artist and a couple of his mates and some countries have found his jokes a tiny bit offensive. Bulgaria was portrayed as a toilet; Denmark was made out of Lego and, if viewed from a certain angle, looked a bit like one of the cartoons of Mohammad that pissed so many people. My favourite part of the work was the UK, which wasn’t there. See what they’ve done there? Britain is not really in Europe, see?

The Award for Fuss Over Nothing of the Week,

This goes to everyone who made a fuss about Baroness Whatsit saying that she could see “the green shots of recovery”. George Osborne claimed that she should apologise for the comment as she was insensitive and out of touch. A spectacular fuss was made in the press about it as well, claiming that it was a gaffe but really what it was was an answer to a direct question about the credit markets and her reply was in reference to a specific company getting a loan. Taken out of context it could be a little wrong but you could consider other business results out in the last weeks. Sales figures for Sainburys, HMV, Tesco, Aldi, Carphone Warehouse and the Smart Car are all up. Consumer confidence survey was up and the website Rightmoves.com says that numbers registering on the site looking for a new home had doubled on this time last year. Green shoots there might be.

Ok that will do for this week, hope you all have fun. Oh and listen to the new single by Britney Spears and Lily Allen because they are both fantastic. I know I should be telling you about obscure indie nonsense but pop music it good for you, sometimes anyway. To redress the balance may I recommend to you albums by The Acorn and Woodpigeon cos they are great too.