TO HEL(MAND) AND BACK

I recently came back from a weekend away feeling a little run down and last night had a kiler sore throat so I was up in the middle of the night consulting WHO guidelines on swine flu symptoms. The array of very general advice that has been posted by UK government agencies led me to start thinking..

Who Do I Believe?

So, I've got a sore throat, losing my voice, woke up in the night hotter than usual and a bit achy.

The government's Swine Flu website tells me that these are all potential signs of an onset, although the sore throat element is not usual but has occurred, in some cases.. helpfully vague. Then I notice a link titled 'current emergency situations - find your local authority. Sounds like they are gearing up for a flood of emergencies nationwide - which is worrying given the downplaying of the whole issue generally. I am asked to put in my postcode (not bloody likely - I've seen Survivors and 28 Days Later and the sound of boots and loaded MP5's on my doorstep isn't one I want to experience!) or my local authority area, which I did. This redirects me to my helpfully-absent-of-any-obvious-link homepage of ABC Council.. Great. They're taking it seriously then.

Another link yielded an NHS site with a hopefully titled 'NHS Flu Symptom Checker.' Trouble is, I clicked and answered two questions, the second being have you a swelling in your throat (which is clearly true given I'm losing my voice). The next page flashes up in red and tells me to dial 999 immediately?? By the time you read this I'll either be dead of some rare emergency case sore throat disease, or the throat will just be subsiding? Either way, I'm not the type to call for an ambulance and waste your tax money on a minor irritating illness. Lesson is if you do use the NHS tool, you are quite likely going to convince yourself you have early onset signs..

So..

Do I Believe?

flu pandemic. scaremongering the population. restriction of travel? I hope not. It didn't work for the Soviets when they tried it to stop the exchange of ideas and a flu virus is more easily exchanged with another human being than an idea I believe? It seems to me that a lot of what's been going on with flu news has been to keep the population focused on other things than the fact that the UK along with many other countries isn't as well endowed in the research and medical containment departments as we might like to believe. Great Britain is no longer as Great as it was. We all know that. Why do some politicans, noticeably at present one particular (Scottish) one with ill fitting suits, still act as if it is?

..which neatly brings me to that other politically driven news item..

Constant shelling and bombing offshore and at some unknown distant location. Continual reports of deaths of 'our people'. Incitement of hate among a population against an enemy that has never really been witnessed by them. Sorry, I've read this somewhere before? George Orwell's 1984 happens to be one of my favourite books, having had to read it first for my O Level English way back when. It has become the most worn out well-leafed book in my library since that time and I must have read it around 10 times in my adult life.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no conspiracy theory loving ignoramous, I'm not easily sold on sinister plots, but I don't believe everything that I see coming out that three foot tube in the corner of the room (ok, I know most people have flatscreens these days and they're a lot bigger than 3 foot and, just to kill this thread off, tube technology is well and truly out.. but hey! indulge this child of the 80s a little).

I Believe..

There's a lot of evil and sorry shit going on along the 3,550 mile long black line in the pic below, but the one thing I firmly believe is..


..there's a whole heap of shit happening at one end of it. Now I'm not a big military type (unless you count my near addiction to Call of Duty 4 on Playstation 3) but my thoughts are increasingly with the people over in Helmand. When will it end? Hopefully soon as if you look at the stats and what's happened in other 'escalations of activity' (that could only be a politicians phrase), the rate of deaths is growing very fast indeed.

Believe.

* footnote. Don't think I'm that clever! The scaling down in this blog's subtitles from Who Do I Believe... to Believe.. is not my clever literary invention. If you want to know more google 'Heaven 17 Do I Believe' and consult their excellent lyrics. A track from their Bigger Than America CD.