Category Archives: death

But of course nobody would do that.

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I was fortunate enough to catch ‘highlights’ of an interview with the wonderful Nicola Sturgeon on the news yesterday where she was banging on about minimum pricing in Scotland again.

I say fortunate, I actually mean incredibly unlucky.

I say wonderful, I actually mean disgusting, hectoring, self-important busybody.

I’ve since discovered an edition of Panorama where rabid lefty Joan Bakewell spent a half hour browbeating the ‘older’ citizen about their alcohol consumption, in what as far as I could see was a promotion and endorsement of minimum alcohol pricing by the BBC.

I barely know where to start, but I’ve decided to focus initially on the SNP’s thought process. Now, either the SNP really are different to all their competitors where they really do actually care about the health of the population rather than being obsessed with doing or saying anything that will get their/keep their hands on the levers of power (which seems unlikely to me), or they are dumber than a bag of hair.

Really? You’re looking at taking the legs of the brewers and distillers out from underneath them? In Scotland? You’re looking at taking the national pastime in Scotland and making it more expensive? And you think this is a good platform for re-election?

Now I’m as far away from Scotland as you can get without wearing a beret and developing an obsession for the music of Johnny Hallyday so I may be a little off the pace as far as local politics goes north of the border, but the LibDems, Labour and Conservatives must be really, amazingly, woefully bad if the SNP can propose this and still have a sporting chance of holding onto power.

What struck me most was Sturgeon’s complete lack of self-awareness, complete detachment from reality and this truly frightening attitude that she and her ilk are on some mission to save the people of Scotland from themselves.

The weasel stats were trotted out, according to statisticians, minimum pricing of 50p a (made up, no basis in science) unit could, note could, not would, save up to 300 lives a year in Scotland. I’d love to know how they came by that number, I can see a quack in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary shouting across A&E, ‘dammit, if booze was 50p a unit we could have saved this man!’

I just don’t see how you can possibly come to such a number, how can you correlate the price of an item with the mortality rate coming from its use? Do more people die pro-rata using a cheap bic than they do a nice fountain pen? It sounds like bollocks to me.

Also I’d like to know which deaths were included, is it limited to people who have engaged in years of alcohol abuse and died in agony as a result of the choices they have made? Does it include the guy who drinks responsibly, except for that one time when he’s celebrating a mate’s promotion/engagement/wedding/baby when he’s had one too many and stumbles out in front of the bus to Paisley?

I don’t see how the numbers are reliable. Additionally, one person saved falls in the parameters of up to 300. Is that reason to penalise the thousands of perfectly responsible drinkers?

So then we come to the next bleat, the cost to the NHS. Except of course that the treatment has already been paid for, both from NI contributions and the already very high tax which exists on alcohol. Let’s drop this cost thing, let’s drop this the NHS is free crap. Go price up the all-singing all-dancing BUPA care package on their website and then compare that figure with your NI deductions. Free? Bollocks. You’ve paid for it, through the nose. This attitude that the NHS can only be used if you’re not ill is rubbish.

But here’s the real nub of the matter. You see, politicians are stupid, they really are. Oh, they might have a degree in some guff from a decent Uni, but they’ve no ‘street smarts’, they’ve gone from school, to uni, to an internship, to parliament, they’ve never lived in the real world. They are imbued with this sense that people will follow them and not think creatively, because they’ve been trained to follow and not think creatively, and they are better, cleverer than the little people. They are only capable of judging the world around them on their own very limited plane and range of experiences.

This best manifests itself in their obsession with prohibition. They honestly think that if they declare something verboten, then nobody will do/have/engage in whatever it is they’ve prohibited. Problem solved.

Except of course, you and I know people aren’t like that. And so, minimum pricing will do nothing beyond cause an increase in the number of alcohol related deaths.

How so? Well as soon as you artificially inflate the price of a commodity, somebody will come in to undercut it, whether legally or not. So, by increasing the base price of alcohol on a whim, you will usher in the following chain of events:

An increase in the smuggling and theft of ‘legitimate’ alcohol. People will start using other supply lines, they won’t stop or cut back on their drinking, they’ll just get it somewhere else whether it is legit or not. Whether it is from England, Ireland, France or Belgium, huge amounts of booze will be moved across borders. Small convenience stores will sell moody booze, the man in the white van who sells the Polski fags will diversify into vodka, pinot grigio and Buckfast. When you see news reports now about people smashing in shop windows to get to the displays of fags, you’ll tomorrow see how they took the fags and the booze.

People will buy it, why? Because it is cheaper than from legit outlets. You think Angus McSporran cares about the tax take?

So this then causes a problem, the revenue is decreasing. The politician will do the only thing they know how to do in this situation, rather than relinquish the grip that caused the problem, they tighten it, they put the base price and the tax up again. Once again market economics comes into play, the sensible drinkers now get priced out of the market, so they go to Moody Ahmed’s shop and make gentle enquiries about the under counter stock, they go to the bootfair and sidle up to the white van man, they have more money, so demand pushes the non-legit stock price up.

The bottom of the market gets squeezed, but meeting their demand is still profitable, especially when you now start selling counterfeit booze, made with harpic and formaldehyde. The makers and retailers of the counterfeit stuff don’t care. You can’t trace them and summons them, Watchdog isn’t going to run an expose on them, they have no brand to protect or PR concerns. They’ll sell any old crap.

Just as dangerous, people will start to distil their own, from God knows what. You’ll get white whisky and brown vodka, you’ll get exploding stills and demolished houses, you’ll get people who have very real, very serious health problems from drinking moonshine or counterfeit booze, very quickly.

People will not stop drinking, and your minimum price plans are a charter for the reckless, the criminal and a huge increase in death, blindness, poisoning, amputations.

This is why I always bang on about the danger of the State. They simply are not equipped to do the job they want to do, they are incompetent and they are dangerous.

I am dying.

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Just wait a moment before you send the flowers and set up an Arsebook page where you can tell me to RIP in peace, this isn’t on the horizon just yet, but I am dying. You are dying. We’re all dying. Just like the digital display on a James Bond timebomb, from the moment we pop out the countdown to zero starts. There is nothing you, I or anyone else can do about it. The clock will eventually read 00:00, and when it does, that’s your lot.

The whole thing is complicated by the fact that the digital display is hidden, and we don’t all get the same number at the start, nor do our numbers all count down at the same rate, so we don’t know when the countdown hits 00:10. There is no way to defuse this bomb, it will never stop at 00:01 as you, the hero of your own action movie, mop your sweating brow and give a sigh of relief.

However, there is yet another story this morning designed to make you think you can live forever, or at least for a long, long time.

Nearly half of cancers diagnosed in the UK each year – over 130,000 in total – are caused by avoidable life choices including smoking, drinking and eating the wrong things, a review reveals.

Tobacco is the biggest culprit, causing 23% of cases in men and 15.6% in women, says the Cancer Research UK report.

Next comes a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables in men’s diets, while for women it is being overweight.

Yes, and?

“Looking at all the evidence, it’s clear that around 40% of all cancers are caused by things we mostly have the power to change.”

But that’s just it, isn’t it? I have to die of something, it will be cancer, a stroke, a heart attack, renal failure, being squashed by a rhino that leaned too far out of its penthouse flat window trying to glimpse a view of that new Ferrari as it drives down the street (rhinos LOVE Ferraris) or being sat in a chair as my body just wears out.

I’ve said it time and again, there’s nothing offensive about death, it is the natural order of things. If I’m lucky, and very few of us will be, I’ll go to bed one night a reasonably healthy person and will just stop working. More likely I will get one incurable condition or another, and if it isn’t cancer it’ll be something else, and it will hurt. Worse still, I’ll live to be 110 and will spend the last twenty years of my life incapable of doing things for myself, eating bland, liquidised food served to me by some person who looks after me because they are paid to do so, not because they have any emotional connection with me. I will spend the last twenty years sat in a wing back chair, bored to distraction, and being governed by rules dictating when I get up, go to bed, when and what I eat and drink, when I take a shit, literally waiting for the warm embrace of death. That isn’t life, that’s a prison sentence for being old.

Well, fuck that.

If I am going to die, and I am, I will do it on MY terms, having lived MY life to MY satisfaction. I’ve only got the one, and I’m buggered if I’m going to live it in a fashion that doesn’t upset a government stats sheet or some idiot who thinks we should and could all live forever.

Seriously, can you imagine anything worse than eternal life?

No, St. Peter will ask me what I did with my life just after I come to a crashing halt in a burning car, sliding sideways into the Pearly Gates, I’ll be the one climbing out of the wreckage screaming ‘Woooooo! What a ride!’ Better that than arriving dressed in beige acrylic with an anorak and a flat cap, paying the ferryman with a coin from a neat, fussy little shovel purse and answering the question ‘What did you do with your life?’ with ‘Everything they told me to’.

It is my life and my body, not yours. And Doctors; it is neither your job nor your place to presume to tell me what to do with it. You are paid to fix it when it goes wrong, or to tell us when it is beyond repair. Just get on with it, won’t you?

Dinner Time

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I was awoken this morning by the someone on the radio talking about an investigation into how a British schoolboy could possibly have been eaten by a polar bear. No doubt the investigation will be conducted with suitable gravitas by a thoroughly credible and competent Norwegian administration, but I’ll tell you now that the correct answer will not be forthcoming. There’ll be talk of better training for the guides on trips such as this, improved security, more accessible communications and so forth. But the real answer is simple.

What happened was a group of kids ventured onto the turf of the world’s largest land predator.

The problem is the human race is arrogant. Deeply assured of its own magnificence and excellence. We think we’re the pinnacle of evolution. We’re not. Oh sure, we’re the most intelligent, the best communicators, the most inventive. But top of the tree? Not even close.

We’re not the best in the Arctic, those polar bears survive and thrive in an environment where we need specialist kit to make sure we don’t freeze to death.

We’re certainly not the best in the sea. Get into a fight with a great white shark in his back yard and there will be just one winner.

In the jungles of India a Tiger can rip your throat out before you’ve even realised he’s close.

The African savannah plays host to the lion. Mr Lion is a huge beast who can finish you off in a heartbeat, his wife is even more deadly, and they’ll hunt you in packs.

The human lives in an environment that it has a degree of control over. We have to, we’re actually quite puny. Even our close cousins the chimpanzee, orang-utan and gorilla would beat seven bells out of us in short order. When lesser creatures encroach on ‘our’ territory we chase them down. Yet, we’re not even particularly good at that. Rats and other vermin abound.

No, we’re not the super-beings we imagine ourselves to be.

Yet the cry goes up, ‘bad polar bear! How dare you kill one of us? Now you must die!’ You see the same off the Australian coast when someone gets chomped by a great white. Granted the shark spits you out, having discovered you aren’t nearly as tasty as you looked. The boats will leave port, bent on killing the beast that so offended us. ‘He’s a killer!’ they’ll cry. Well, of course he’s a killer, he’s a bloody shark.

And therein lies the hint, a great white shark doesn’t need a boat and a rifle to do its killing. It just swims up and bites. Human arrogance attributes fault at the door of the animal. No, the animal is doing what is meant to do, what it lives to do, the only thing it knows how to do.

If you go into a part of the world which is ruled by fecking enormous predators, then you run the risk of meeting them. They may not be pleased to see you. Don’t take it personally, it is just business. They don’t answer to politicians and committees. There is no moral and ethical debate about their actions. Policemen and the law are unknown to them. Except the oldest law of all; I’m bigger and better than you.

If you don’t want to run into a polar bear, lion, tiger or shark then stay in Berkshire. If a polar bear walks down the street in Windsor, knocks on your door and punches you in the face, you may have cause for complaint.

This planet doesn’t belong to the human race, and that means that sometimes you have to give up centre stage and deal with the fact that you aren’t number one.

It doesn’t make what happened any less tragic, but it is the way the world is.

Did I do the right thing?

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A few days ago I set out my thinking about jumping ship from LPUK to UKIP. Well, my membership card arrived on Monday. That means I can now register for the UKIP forum and read about what is going on in the UKIP world.

I’m not sure how I feel about the UKIP forums being available to registered members only. Posting, probably fair enough, reading? I don’t know. One of the strengths of the Libertarian cyber-movement is the ability to access material without trouble, what also sets the Libertarian set apart is the willingness to allow unmoderated comment on party and personal blogs, something most other parties would run a mile from.

Although as we’ll see, this isn’t without its down sides.

Still, we’ll see. I went and visited the old house this morning, to see what has been going on over at the LPUK site. Since I left, it appears that the place has continued to fall apart, although I don’t think the two are linked, it was heading that way anyway, that’s why I left.

The whole thing is dominated by truth, half-truth, spun-truth, conspiracy theory and complete fantasy. It made it impossible for me to have any faith in any of the people involved. It is a complete bun-fight, and I should imagine to an outside observer it is very, very funny.

There are three news stories over at the LPUK site, where the same old people go on and throw the same old accusations, with the same old people issuing the same old rebuttals, and the same old people running the same old smear campaigns. The comments on these articles really are most . . . interesting? Enlightening? Entertaining? I don’t know. But when articles start referencing a forum run by David Icke, you have to wonder who and what is involved in the party.

Maybe there is some grand conspiracy involving Common Purpose, the Illuminati, the Masons and lizards from outer space, I suppose we’ll know when tin foil is banned. Up until that point and given the inability of governments to organise the simplest of tasks, I’ll remain sceptical.

Have I done the right thing in joining UKIP? That remains to be seen, I do believe that the question of our EU membership is the biggest item on the agenda, arguing about anything else is a waste of time. It’s like discussing what colour your new curtains will be while watching your house burn down. What you should be doing is calling the fire brigade. Let’s sort the big one out and then worry about the other stuff, eh?

Have I done the right thing in leaving LPUK? Without doubt. I can’t read the musings of those involved, the excuses, the accusations, see the smoke and mirrors and the rapidly swivelling eyes, and think that anyone would want to be involved with the party.

To those involved in the ridiculous arguments; well done, you’ve killed the party stone dead. A plague on both your houses.

The One That Is Calling For An Undertaker. . .

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He is ill. Very ill indeed. I believe it to be terminal. There is no point in calling for a Doctor. There’s nothing he can do now, anyhow, it is a Friday evening, there is no hope of persuading the man to make a housecall.

Calling NHS Direct proved fruitless. You see, when I called the surgery, they merely told me to call NHS Direct, the Doctors simply will not respond if one falls ill at the evenings or the weekend. After speaking to the young lady at NHS Direct, explaining the symptoms, she suggesting calling the Doctor. I told them I had tried, without success. I had best go to A&E then, was the advice.

Of course, the A&E department was closed three years ago, there is now just a minor injuries unit. The nearest A&E department is over twenty miles away. I’m not at all convinced the old man would survive the journey on the potholed road from here to there.

We’ll have the dour man with the dark suit and the tape measure then.

Undertakers will always do housecalls. One of the conditions is that the object of their attentions is dead. To steal a phrase from Monty Python, ‘he’s not at all well.’

The Underaker is a busy man, but he acts with decorum and gravitas. ‘What are the symptoms?’ he asked, when I requested he wait for the death rattle.

My response was to tell him about the auto-immune condition, where the immune system, supposed to defend the body against harm, attacks perfectly healthy parts. Strange things, auto-immune conditions, always entertaining. The Undertaker was interested, and leaned forward in the chair he was sat on, outside the bedroom door, ‘Oh yes, do tell.’

I explained how the defence system did its best to wound a part of the body that bore no threat to it whatsoever. It had done no wrong, yet is was punished all the same.

‘Amazing’ replied the Undertaker, ‘is this common?’ I explained that it was all too common, and whilst a small episode like this was not fatal, it was an indicator of bigger problems, a signpost which, if researched, could uncover things that the body was unaware of and were only seen if one looked very hard indeed.

The Undetaker later revealed to me, in a moment of explicit candour, that hs is no man of medicine, he informed me with a wave of the had and in a most self-depricating style, that he is more akin to a meat packer or a butcher. He knew, he said, which bit should go where, but had no understanding of the internal workings.

He pressed me on the bigger problems. I recounted how the first auto-immune condition was similar to the body having a slight falling out with itself, but the main, more hidden problem, was like all out war. The body was, in effect, using weapons of mass destruction on itself, in a catastrophic civil war.

The Undertaker gave a sigh. He told me how one of the certainties in his job was that he would make regular visits to the care homes in the area. It always seemed to him that either the body went, or the mind went. The nursing staff always seemed to display a sense of almost cruel relief when someone with a perfectly functioning mind, but trapped in a contrary body, departed. It was almost like a release from an inescapable prison.

I mused on the point, would it be better to have lost one’s mind and be unaware of one’s predicament, than to be imprisoned with no chance of parole? I came to the conclusion that it was.

However, the Undertaker was labouring under a mis-apprehension. Not only was the body at the end of a slow and attritional campaign of self-destruction, but it had also undergone this internal battle with a great and debilitating insanity.

Firstly, the ailing old man had descended into a psychopathic episode. Unaware to recognise the damage he had done to others, uncaring for those he had hurt; selfishness and disregard had become his mark.

A bi-polar condition had also taken hold. With the old man consistently acting against his own counsel, suffering delusional states of self-perception where one has acheived the impossible, arguing with his better nature, miserly one minute, surrendering his childrens’ inheritance, gratis, the next.

The poor old man now lies in bed, coughing and spluttering, his compexion as grey as the weather outside his window. He decries his body as a traitor. He insulted the doctors who had tried to minister to his needs as charlatans and snake oil salesmen and has damned his descendents to penury.

Not many will mourn his passing. I think back to the Undertaker’s account of the response of the nurses at the care home and think to myself, perhaps it is for the best.

The Undertaker sits in his wheel-back chair on the landing, the slow ticking of the clock marking the old man’s last few moments. He has reached into the inside pocket of his frock coat and is reading a small volume he obviously carries for inescapable delays. This is a man used to waiting.

He waits tonight, and with the trace of a tear in the corner of his eye, he remembers what a grand, proud and respected man Mr. Britain used to be.

The One That Is Bloody Fed Up. . .

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I was going to blog about the story that drinking even a pint of beer a day or somesuch will make you die of horrible cancer, but Salted Slug beat me to it and stated a very eloquent case.

Just as a general point I would say there is nothing offensive about death per-se. A young thug picking up old women and impaling them on spiked railings is offensive, just dying isn’t.

I will die, you will die, everyone will die. If we’re lucky it won’t happen all at the same time.

If I don’t die of smoking cancer, I will die of drinking cancer, or eating meat cancer, or eating vegetables cancer, or sitting down and having a nice cup of tea cancer, or going outside into the fresh-air cancer, or herpes, or something. I am confident that when I do die, it won’t be of old age, or natural causes. Not because I won’t be old and die in my bed, but because by that time it will be law that death has to be attributed to a definite cause. Our bodies will not be allowed to get old and just wear out.

Cars get old and wear out, their bodywork will be dented and scratched, a number of minor repairs and replacements will have been made, perhaps even one or two major problems will have been resolved. An old car may be condemned because a big end has gone, or a foo-foo valve has blown, but really, it is just an old car which is worn out and dead.

We are the same. Why are people so offended by the idea that we are mortal and have a limited time on this Earth? Just enjoy it, don’t spend your time worrying about how it will end for you. Is it that you think you are so important that you should be immortal? (Mummy Longlegs touches on this in a very sensitive, sensible fashion)

People are born, people grow up, people get old, people die. Deal with it.

And whilst we’re at it, just fucking leave me the fuck alone won’t you?

Jeez.

Sir Bobby Robson. 18 February 1933 – 31 July 2009

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A departure from the normal format this evening.

I love football. However not as much as I used to, and a little less today.

I’ve not commented on the recent deaths of the two WW1 veterans, not that I don’t care, I have boundless respect for them and their actions, but I knew nothing about them personally.

Bobby Robson’s death today has left me feeling genuinely very sad. His Ipswich side were in their pomp when I was first exposed to football, and his England side were the first side I was old enough to follow with any sense of understanding during the ’86 World Cup. The fact he managed to keep hold of his job after the disastrous ’88 European Championships in the face of some shocking treatment from the media and then took the side to the semi finals in the Italian World Cup of 1990 stand as a testament to his determination.

Whenever a public figure dies the tributes come ‘pouring in’ and Robson is no different. What is different is the almost tangible feeling of admiration, affection and respect that these tributes betray. Here was a man who was held in the highest regard, the reactions of Ipswich Town and Newcastle United and their supporters are touching, but not surprising, given his long associations with both clubs. What is just as touching have been the reactions of PSV Eindhoven, Barcelona, FC Porto and Sporting CP Lisbon where he spent less time but left just as big an impression.

Robson played a big part in the development of figures such as Jose Mourinho, Ronaldo (Luís Nazário de Lima) and current Barcelona head coach Pep Guardiola. His influence in the European game is not perhaps as well understood in England, being overshadowed by his success in Italia ’90.

In an era where unprecedented sums of money are changing hands for players who act in a fashion which would see them given ASBOs if they were ‘normal people’, Robson stands as a reminder of the virtues of quiet industry and respectful behaviour.

The game is a deal poorer for his loss.

The One That Bloody Hopes She Isn’t. . .

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Former home secretary Jacqui Smith has admitted she quit the cabinet partly because of the expenses row over pornography watched by her husband.

Well, there’s a surprise.

Ms Smith, MP for Redditch, said: “It’s part of the reason I resigned.” She added: “You become a person who is associated with these things.”

Well, that’s the end of the porn industry. Who wants her to be associated with anything, let alone *artistic* photomagraphs?

The One That Feels For The Scapegoat. . .

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Can you hear that dripping sound? Listen carefully, that is the sound of my heart bleeding.

Poor old Rose Gibb, I blogged yesterday about this horrible woman, well she’s started her case in court today, and you know what, it just isn’t fair.

I might have got her wrong.

According to her testimony, the Healthcare Commission’s report into the state of hygeine in Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS was ‘full of inaccuracies, innuendo and unfounded criticisms’ and that she disagreed with the findings. She has also said that she resigned as she ‘understood that this [her treatment] was a reaction to the impending HCC report to manage the public and any fallout. I was to be the scapegoat.’

Scapegoat? You were the Chief Executive of an almost criminally dirty hospital, indeed if memory serves correct, Al-Beeb made an undercover report into conditions in another hospital in M&TW NHS Trust.

Damn right you carry the can, you were getting paid £150k per annum, so you’d better take fucking responsibility. How I long for a job where I can get that amount (and probably a tasty bonus as well) and then absolve myself of any fault if it all goes tits up.

I hope you lose your house, AND contract an illness which requires you get treatment in a hospital as filthy as the one you ran.

The One That Wants You To Take A Good, Hard Look . . .

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This, my friends, is what a total fucking bitch looks like.

Take a good hard look.

‘Who is this contemptible non-entity?’ I hear you ask.

Her name is Rose Gibb she was the Chief Exec of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. On her watch 90 people died of C.diff infection. That’s 90. The hospital under her charge was so filthy that hygeine standards were revealed which would have caused concern in some fly-blown sub-Saharan hell hole hospital.

Health Sec, Alan Milburn did one of the few correct things this government has tried to do by attempting to prevent her receiving a pay-off. Bearing in mind this is a woman that walked away from a contract of employment having overseen the deaths of the better part of 100 people, just before a damning report into standards at the hospital were released.

Even though she’d failed to stop the death of 90 people, even though she’d walked away from her job, even though the Health Secretary had figured out it was a shocking waste of taxpayers’ money to pay her off and asked the Trust not to do it, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, amazingly, negotiated a £250,000 pay-off but then witheld £175,000 of that following Milburn’s little campaign.

Excuse me? What the fuck? She walked away from her job, where she had spectacularly failed in her job (how does it go? ‘First do no harm’ or something isn’t it?) and actually expected a pay-off! Only in British Public Service would this happen.

But poor old Rose, obviously £75,000 isn’t enough, oh no, she’s taking the trust to the High Court now to demand the balance of the £250k. I suppose she’s been advised she’s got a decent case, or she wouldn’t have taken this action. I can only hope the Judge tells her to fuck right off and saddles her with a huge costs bill.

Proof positive, public service at the high level in this country is dead. It isn’t about doing the best by your country or your community, it is about as creaming as much of the taxpayers’ money as possible and having no shame or self awareness.

Rose Gibb, in a country that is administered by the sociopathic, hubristic, avaricious, arrogant, incompetent and detestible, you truly are one of the stand-out candidates. You have been shown to be one of the biggest wastes of space in Kent. I hope you lose your house, bitch.