DEFINE IRONY...

 
Some irony courtesy of The Economist this week..

"The great irony of Mr Cameron's predicament is that he has managed to get himself embroiled in a crisis concerning something he has never really cared about: newspapers."

Full editorial here

 

PARIS...

..and so 7 July sees me travelling back to Paris, a sort of delayed business trip, re-arranged from a meeting in a bland glass office at Brussels airport to a much more likeable location, and an excuse for me and my partner in crime/life and all other things to spend a few days in a warmer city than our windy Yorkshire farmhouse..

I have been doing my fair share of last minute reading up on the latest clubs and restaurants etc on the web and this struck me as a great new site being developed by a load of freelance bloggers:
http://www.breakintoparis.com

It carried an article about Paris coffee shops/patissieres that was very interesting and carried the unforgetable and wholly agreeable line.. " Regardless of your reasoning, please, do not go to Starbucks! Like hooking up with an ex, you will regret it! And if you don’t, you should."

and so, to Paris.. a tout a l'heure....

CUCUMBERS... (AGAIN)

It has been a while since I substantially blogged.  So, I thought I'd return to one of my favourite pet/hate topics. Cucumbers.

They have been in the news recently due to the possible link between cucumbers and the European E.Coli outbreak which appeared to start in Germany.  The German authorities very quickly centred on cucumbers as being the culprits.  In error as it happens, but not a bad thing as far as I'm concerned. Any adverse publicity for the slimey green things the better I say!

Cucumbers. Blood pathogens. Bean sprouts.  Who would have thought it?

Well, actually, much as I'd like to condemn all cucumbers to the untimely death they received when discarded and shredded recently (see pictures), in the final event they were not to blame. boo!

The E.coli outbreak in Germany during May 2011 was actually caused by the humble bean sprout.  Well, technically this isn't true either.  The outbreak was most lilkely caused by poor hand hygiene.

Somebody that had a virulent strain of E.coli after eating bean sprouts failed to wash their hands sufficiently and prepared food for others which then became the carrier for the spread of the outbreak.  3,000 people were affected but not all 3,000 ate the originally contaminated bean sprouts, so humans largely had themselves to blame.  A common cause of mankind's problems I think?

So, onto E.coli itself.  A magnificent all-conquering bacteria in many ways..

Escherichia coli is named after Theodor Escherich who first identified the bacteria in 1885.

E.coli falls in the family 'Enterobacteria', which means that they live and thrive in the lower intestine of warm-blooded animals. Human babies are born without these bacteria but tests have shown that they populate the human intestines in less than 2 days of being born, passed to the child in water and foodstuffs.  When we say 'a' bacteria this is technically wrong.  E.coli bacteria come in very many flavours (though I wouldn't advise you tasting any of them for obvious reasons!).

The most feared strain of E.coli is called strain 0157. This produces the Shiga toxin, released locally in the gut to damage the cells that line the intestine. 0157 has been responsible for some very large outbreaks of food poisoning all over the world in the last decade, involving hundreds of thousands of people. This is the strain at the centre of the German outbreak.

E.coli are not all bad.  We have them in our guts to help with the balance of digestive enzymes and, somewhat ironically, to protect us from other pathogenic bacteria. Only some, thankfully quite rare, strains of the bacteria cause damage to humans and other warm blooded animals.

There are 5 main 'nasty types' of E.coli, all produce the runs (diarrhea) of some form or another. Some cause only mild diarrhea (with or without fever), others diarrhea with potentially lethal damage to kidneys or the urinary system.  Two types are exclusive to humans only; enteroinvasive E.coli and enteroaggregative E.coli.  The most common form, enterotoxigenic E.coli (ETEC) causes more than 200 million cases of diarrhea and 380,000 deaths a year, mostly in children in developing countries and travellers.

For me the most interesting points about E.coli infections relate to their genetic characteristics.  E.coli bacteria per se are not bad.  As above, they live in our bodies and help us.  The nasty strains are bad because they have taken on parts of DNA from other bacterium.  They acquire extra genes and these genes code for toxins or proteins which turn the useful E.coli bad in the same way as you should never allow a Gremlin out in the daytime.

Another genetic trait is once turned bad, the bad strains of the bacteria not only 'give birth' to more nasty bacteria (the usual route through which say a virus or other infection spreads) but they can also pass on their genetic code horizontally across an existing population of otherwise harmless bacteria (through the same process that turned them bad in the first place). This is known as bacterial conjugation or transformation.  Once a few get into your system, they turn the existing population against you as well as multiply their own. Nasty!

So, a few pictures?  They are quite beautiful in their own micro-biological way..

Pretty huh?

So, what of the German outbreak?  After back-tracking on their cucumber story, German health officials say a woman working in a kitchen of a catering company near Frankfurt became infected with the bacterium after eating bean sprouts and then passed it on to 20 people she prepared food for. These 20 people passed it on in turn.

 
Cases began appearing at the start of May 2011 and the outbreak swelled to crisis level over the next three weeks causing 39 deaths and affecting almost 3,000 people.  The city of Hamburg became the outbreak epicentre.

Now, PLEASE WASH YOUR HANDS!
    

EM/IMMIGRATION..

  
Something interesting is happening to the level of people coming into and leaving the UK at the moment.

Despite the issue being out of the news lately (oh how quickly the reporters forget and move onto another issue?) the latest data from the Office for National Statistics shows a surprising result:

• Net inward migration to the UK was 242,000 in the year to September 2010, the highest level since June 2005.

• This has mainly been driven by a fall in emigration since December 2008, mainly of British and more recently among A8 nationals (Central and Eastern Europeans).

• HMG's target (or aspiration depending on which minister is discussing) is to reduce annual net migration to the 'tens of thousands' so the challenge has got tougher.

ONS Official UK migration statistics can be found here

There have been concerns raised about the impact that immigration limits will have on companies looking to recruit skilled staff from outside the European area.  Many of these concerns were a consequence of the model that UKBA used to put in place the interim limits which ended in March 2011.

The new permanent limit comes into effect in April. Figures published by UKBA show that out of a monthly limit of 4,200 only 1,019 certificates of sponsorship were requested and granted and only 781 successful application were made in May.  The balance will rollover to June 2011. 1,500 certificates of sponsorship are available each month after April - which had a higher limit to account for any pent up demand.

So the message at the moment is that the cap does not seem to be inhibiting recruitment and if companies have been deterred from recruiting by the rhetoric they should not be.

The UK still welcomes the brightest and the best.