Fragments of the future.

(The Kindle gadget arrived. More on that when I've had time to play with it.)


Well, it's been a day of incredible lunacy today.

First up, a vaccine against drink. It's billed as a vaccine against alcoholism but this line gives it away -

'With the vaccine, the desire to consume alcohol will be greatly reduced thanks to these reactions,' Mr Asenjo told Radio Cooperativa.

Have you heard of Shaggy Inkcap mushrooms? There were some growing near a place I once worked. They are very nice fried as long as you catch them before they start dissolving into black mush but you can't have wine with that meal. They contain a substance that reacts badly with alcohol, and no meal, however fine, tastes anything like as good on the way back. The chemical involved was extracted and used to treat alcoholism. It didn't work on the worst cases. They just chucked up and carried on drinking. So does this vaccine work more effectively?

Researchers have already successfully tested the vaccine on rats who were dependent on alcohol and got them to halve their consumption.

They didn't stop drinking. Plus, that statement does not tell us whether all the rats drank only half as much, or whether some rats stopped and some didn't even slow down. Sounds like it's no more effective, really. It will work on overdrinkers who aren't alkies, like me, it will work on mild drinkers, but the hardened alkie will chuck up and chuck more in. It's not for them.

With boozers 'costing the NHS money', how long before this vaccine is administered to anyone who turns up in Casualty drunk? How long before the law offers it as an alternative to prison? If you cost the NHS money, the NHS has the right to meddle with your liver metabolism. Nobody will object. It's only the drinkers.

Next, a vaccine against cocaine. Drug use costs the NHS money so the NHS has the right to meddle with your immune system. Nobody will object. It's only the junkies. Nobody will notice that if it works for cocaine, it will work for pretty much anything. Even caffeine.

In defence of the NHS for a change, a bouncy castle with a head on it wants to sue the NHS for not controlling his life, thereby letting him get fat. There are many things to moan about with the NHS, but they have never come round to my house and force-fed me. I have never answered my door to find an NHS-delivered pie. In fact, I have never met nor heard of anyone who has experienced such a thing. A more common complaint is malnutrition due to hospital - I hesitate to call it - 'food'.

In this man's case, the NHS have given him a stomach-stapling operation which has reduced his weight considerably but I really don't believe the NHS were responsible for him getting fat. Perhaps he should cast a bleary eye towards the baker and the pie shop... or on second thoughts, perhaps not.

I put on some weight over the last couple of months. Work is silent at this time of year, the weather (it's snowing yet again) does not make the outdoors appealing at all and Christmas food is like a calorie TARDIS - when you eat it, it calls in calories from other dimensions. So I am on a strict no-snack regime until I return to normal size. I don't need the NHS to lose this weight and I certainly didn't need them to get fat. I put on the weight, I will deal with it.

This is a consequence of the nanny state. As long as the NHS and the rest tell people they can't manage their own lives and need to be managed, they can expect to get sued for not managing people's lives. Why does Mr. Creosote believe it's the NHS's responsibility to run his life for him? Because successive governments, lobby groups, vested interests and NHS have insisted that it is so.

The NHS are not to blame for him being fat. They are to blame for his belief that it is their fault.

Smokers didn't get the day off either. We are to be eradicated by 2050. I probably won't live to see the final solution but others will.

The social aspect of cigarette smoking – which costs the NHS approximately £2.7billion a year – has also suffered after the 2007 ban on smoking in public places.

Interesting phrasing there. The social aspect of smoking costs the NHS money? Well, let's look at that 2.7 billion a year alongside some other numbers from the article.

Ten million smokers. £6 a pack (rounding down). Let's say an average of a pack a day per smoker - some will be more, some less. Three-quarters of the price is tax, so every smoker pays £4.50 extra tax per day. Smokers overall pay an additional £45 million in tax every day, on top of all the other taxes they may or may not be paying.

So, cost to the NHS from UK and health tourist smokers - £2.7 billion per year.
Additional tax paid by UK smokers - £16.4 billion per year.

And those are antismoker numbers, not mine. I have also reduced £6.50 to £6 and 'more than three-quarters' to three-quarters. The real revenue take is higher. This makes no mention of Pharmer profits on patches and gum and the tax paid on that, nor of the tax given to ASH in order to stop smokers paying extra tax which pays for ASH... like they are really going to let that happen. No, ASH don't want us wiped out. They prefer to see a gradual decline because if we go, they go. Rather like a tapeworm, in fact.

The article speculates that smoking might be banned. Yes, because that worked really well for heroin, cocaine, guns, knives, and terrorists. Do these people imagine the government will ever ban something that earns them £45 million a day and saves on pensions too? Do they imagine ASH will ever call for a ban on the one thing that validates their existence? No, ASH will call for more funding and higher tobacco taxes to cover it and the government, like a penny prostitute, will do absolutely anything for money.

In other news, massive amounts of fattening cakes might have been poisoned by naughty German eggs. The poison in question is dioxin and it's one of those that accumulates. Alcohol gets metabolised, as does nicotine, so once you stop taking it in your levels decline. Not so with dioxin. It stays in there. Take in more later and the concentration in you increases. It's cumulative, like the mercury you inhale as vapour if you break a Green light bulb. It just keeps building up.

So, what's the death toll? How many are sick? How many even felt a bit queasy? None. It's cumulative, yes, but you'd have to eat enough sugary goodness to give yourself a cardiac arrest before you'd take in enough of the contaminant to notice. Still, they've been withdrawn.

But there's an undercurrent here -

Around 90 per cent of our exposure to dioxins comes from food.
The main sources are foods high in animal fat such as milk, fish, eggs and meat.
Doctors say they have no immediate impact on health, but can cause problems if they are absorbed into our bodies over long periods at high levels.

Over time, you will absorb and retain dioxins from non-Green food sources and therefore, meat, fish, eggs, and milk will... (drum roll) cost the NHS money. It's the same game.

Why the frantic recall of foods that don't contain enough toxin for anyone to notice? To scare people. Then link it to all the foods we are not supposed to eat, from cakes to caviar. How could you set up such a scare?

You need a product with many uses, such as eggs. But you don't want to actually kill anyone or make anyone sick because that risks compensation claims. Therefore it has to be diluted to a level that's not dangerous but is detectable. As when eggs are deshelled and sold as liquid egg, where eggs from multiple sources are pooled. Oh, but how to get your trace poison into the eggs? You have to feed it to the hens and no farmer, nor any feed producer, would risk their livelihoods by doing that. So you make a 'mistake'. You send the crappy vegetable oil intended for biofuel instead of the clean stuff intended for mixing into feeds. Deliberate? You decide.

While deciding, remember that you live in a world where this woman claims that government cuts will harm child care and where second-hand TV watching is considered an actual, real disease (Thanks to Anti-Citizen One for that last link).

Personally, I wouldn't put it past them. They do, after all, aspire to a world like this. It's no joke. That is really the sort of world they want and they will stop at nothing to get it.

You will be vaccinated against booze, vaccinated against drugs, taxed out of your car and your cigarettes, and having proved that left to your own devices you will get fat (The Blob will set a legal precedent there) your food will be rationed. No meat, fish or dairy, it will make you ill and you will cost the NHS money.

Impossible? Conspiracy theory? Tinfoil hat? Cannot happen? Nobody could possibly want it to happen?

Watch the video again. It's all in there and it's all happening now. You can deny it if you like, just as you can deny the sky is blue.

I'm over fifty which means I am approaching the age where I will be deemed to be 'costing the NHS money' even though the local health centre don't know who I am. I also smoke and drink and care nothing for any of the health fads. I won't live to see this world of boxes and blind obedience and don't want to.

If you are twenty or thirty, you will see it.

Do you want it?

Well, do you?