Longrider

Much as I despise all forms of discrimination, there comes a clash whereby I must choose on which side I will descend. Inevitably, it is the side of liberty.

The government (now straight away, I’m not going to like it) has told hotel owners that they must change their way of doing trade in order to remain within the law:

Muslim or Christian guest house owners who refuse to accept homosexual couples must impose a “sleeping together ban” on all other guests, the Government says.

As the holiday season gets under way, Meg Munn, a junior minister, has emphasised that it is illegal to allow married couples to share a room at a guest house or hotel while not allowing homosexuals the same right.

If gays are turned away, the only way a Christian or Muslim guest house owner can lawfully stay in business is if he or she offers single bedrooms to all guests - straight or gay.

It takes some doing, but New Labour in all their spite and control freakery, have managed it; they’ve put me in bed with the god botherers.

Okay, do I think guest house owners are wrong to discriminate against gay couples? Yes, absolutely. Do I think they should be allowed to do business with whom they choose – even if doing so damages their business? Yes, absolutely. If turning away trade is what their conscience tells them to do, and that trade goes next door, then so be it. Should any of this be any concern whatsoever of government? No, absolutely not.

Miss Munn said a wedding photographer who refused a gay wedding booking should take up portrait photography instead, while a chauffeur who declined to work with homosexuals must specialise in corporate travel.

Miss Munn wants to learn to butt out of other peoples’ business. As a self-employed contractor, I am at liberty to turn away trade if I am sufficiently stupid and if I was that stupid, I wouldn’t be so daft as to let people know that it was my bigotry at work; that would be stupid. That is my concern – and my accounts will tell me that it is bad business, it is not for Miss Munn to be involved. Not to mention the arrant control freakery and the insufferable “taking offence” industry that she represents. There are plenty of hotels that will accommodate same sex couples, so boycott the ones that choose to impose religious morality, let the market condemn them to fade away.

Giles Fraser, the vicar of Putney and a leading Church of England liberal, said the legislation was right and fair because discrimination against homosexuals was always wrong.

“It is nonsense for the Government to allow any loopholes for religious homophobia,” he added. “Bigotry is bigotry whether it’s dressed up in the language of faith or not.”

Indeed it is, but in a free society we allow people to be bigots. It wouldn’t be a free society otherwise.

A visit to the doctors today has triggered a set of protocols; minor routine examinations that are likely to find nothing, but as I am 49 and 50 is a trigger point for these protocols, the doctor is playing safe. That’s fine, I’ve no problem with this. Better to find nothing than die of undiscovered bowel cancer.

I do, however, have a problem with this:

Men over 50 should be prescribed cholesterol-busting drugs, the Government’s heart and stroke tsar has recommended.

Excuse me? I realise that I am approaching a potentially dangerous age, but really!

Professor Roger Boyle said a “blanket approach” could save lives, cash and NHS time. But, he said the public might not be ready for the move, which would see millions given a drug as a preventative measure.

Yes, I suppose it could save lives, and damn right people might not be ready for such a move. I bloody well object most vigorously to being medicated “just in case” I have a cholesterol problem.

The Government was also conscious of acting like a “nanny state”, he said.

No? Really? I can’t believe that for one moment.

That’s exactly what such a proposal amounts to. Treating us like children who are unable to see the doctor and get a blood test if we suspect that we might have a cholesterol problem; and, frankly, the effrontery to assume that we cannot manage our diets or exercise properly.

It’s interesting, is it not, that a study that suggests risk groups is seized upon by the control freaks and used as an excuse for blanket control. Let’s start with the initial premise:

In June, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) published draft guideline that said millions of people should be assessed to find out how many would benefit from statins.

That is fair enough. Testing is fine.

Information routinely collected by GPs should be used to identify those most at risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) and prioritise them for further tests, it said.

Further testing of high risk people is also okay by me.

Adults who have a 20 per cent or greater risk of developing heart disease over the next decade should be offered statins, it said.

Offering statins to those at risk is also fine be me. But that is not what Roger Boyle wants to do.

Yesterday Professor Boyle said determination of risk could be linked to an age threshold, possibly 50 for men and 60 for women.

A blanket, scatter-gun approach more fitting to the hard of thinking than a rational, reasoned approach to the care of a particular group of patients. It’s as bad as Ruth Kelly wanting to stop people driving over a certain age.

Fortunately, there is some hope for Boyle as he concedes:

“I don’t think the general public is ready for the blanket approach where you get to 50 and take a pill.”

Now is the time to step back from the brink.

However, he argued, there would be a bigger impact in terms of people’s health if society went for the blanket approach.

Because we are all too stupid to look after ourselves and make our own decisions. I would not take such pills “just in case” as I prefer, wherever possible, not to use drugs.

“But I think we also are conscious of the accusation of being a nanny state and imposing things on people, so I think choice remains an important thing.”

Quite right, so now is the time to shut up and drop the idea. Educate people, test where appropriate and offer the remedy, then leave it up to us to decide.

Update: I see that the Mail carries the same story. The comments indicate that the UK population really is as stupid as I am beginning to conclude that it is…

Update 28/07/07: I see that the Groan has picked up the story this morning. An interesting comment from the British Heart Foundation:

The British Heart Foundation urged caution against mass medication using statins until there was longer-term data on the side-effects. Research published this week in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology suggested a very slight increase in cancers associated with higher doses of the drugs.

Well, blow me down…

One final point – statins are available over the counter. So, if you are a man over 50 and are worried about cholesterol and cardiovascular problems, you can toddle along to the pharmacist and buy some. Those of us who do not consider ourselves to be at risk can choose not to. End of problem. No need for the state to be involved at all. Or am I missing something here?

Apparently, A&E departments across the country aren’t probing into peoples’ lives enough:

Most A&E departments in England do not identify problem drinkers or offer them long-term help when they seek treatment, a study says.

Really? There’s a surprise.

A survey of all casualty departments, published in Emergency Medicine Journal, found 87% did not ask any questions about alcohol consumption.

Another staggering statement of the entirely predictable.

This did not appear to affect treatment on the spot, but meant people were not offered sources of long-term help.

Well, I should hope that it doesn’t affect on the spot treatment – that’s what A&E is for, after all.

Only four of the 191 hospitals formally assessed dangerous drinking.

Why is that, I wonder? Because the medics are too busy patching ’em up and shipping ’em out to make way for the next one, I suspect.

“Research has found that up to 40% of people attending A&E departments would benefit from help or advice about their drinking,” said the study, conducted by Bob Patton of the National Addiction Centre.

“Yet as staff are not using formal screening tools to measure alcohol-related harm, the hazardous drinkers may not get the help they need because they aren’t being asked questions about their alcohol use.”

Okay, all facetiousness aside, there’s a serious point or two here. Firstly, while A&E deal with immediate care, it is not – nor should it be – their responsibility to get involved with long term care. Sure, if they have the time, then advice is all well and good if such advice helps prevent a revisit. However, we are talking about an addictive substance and the suggestion being made is that it is the addicts who need this help…

Let’s follow the reasoning.

If you had a couple of beers and had an accident on the way home or were physically attacked, you probably wouldn’t want addiction counselling or questions about your intake because you are not an addict and if you were an addict, you’d probably be too far under to be taking any rational part in the process anyway. So what use is screening or advice in this situation? Or is the sub-text here that people will get “help” whether they want it or not? Therein lies a rocky road to disaster.

Bob Patton, being associated with the national addiction centre should know a thing or two about addiction, one would think. In which case, he will realise that no one can help the addict. The only “cure” for addiction is abstinence and the addict has to do it all by themselves. Any help has to be initiated by the addict otherwise it simply will not work. Trying to talk to someone about their addiction while they are still under the influence is a waste of time. The addict will say anything, do anything, to hide the addiction – even when it is blindingly obvious. They simply withdraw into denial. Any hope that exploring their lifestyle and drinking habits will be met with an honest, truthful reply from the intoxicated addict in A&E is pure pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking. As a waste of busy medics’ time, this is perhaps one of the best I’ve seen suggested so far.

While on the subject of drinking, I notice that Neil Harding has picked up Liam Donaldson’s baton and decided to run with it.

Alcohol (as a percentage of disposable income) is cheaper than for 50 years. If Brown wants to look at the causes of binge drinking he needs to look no further than the price.

Er, no. Sorry, this is the same simplistic thinking that Donaldson was suggesting with exactly the same simplistic solution (more tax if you weren’t already ahead of us at the back, there). Although unlike Donaldson, Neil does not want to return to the idiotic licensing laws of yore.

The proposals to regulate supermarket deals on alcohol, increase taxes on alcohol and increase the age to 21 for off-licence purchases are the right way to go if we want to tackle problem drinkers

You were expecting that one, of course. I pause here to consider the conundrum of being able to vote but not able to go and buy a beer at the offy…

Now, I agree with Neil’s desire to be able to enjoy a quiet drink mulled with good company and intelligent conversation; who wouldn’t? But taxing everyone for the behaviour of the few is disproportionate. The suggestion that cheap alcohol is the problem – and, indeed, any suggestion that this is in some way a new phenomenon – is single dimensional. Britain has been the drunkard of Europe for centuries and alcohol has been cheap before. The terms used may be new; “antisocial drinking” and “binge drinking” for example, but it’s been going on as long as the grape and the grain have been brewed and distilled and is likely to continue while politicians kick around the symptoms with more regulation and taxation.

The curious phenomenon seems to be that it is an Anglo Saxon thing. Alcohol is cheap across the channel – that’s why people flock across there on booze runs, but the continentals don’t have the same attitudes and culture. Alcohol is cheap and freely available and is drunk by young and old alike at any time of the day without ill-effect. It is, therefore, perfectly possible to have sensible drinking without taxing it to oblivion. I would also point out that illegal substances aren’t exactly cheap, but that doesn’t stop people becoming addicted to them, nor does it prevent them funding their habit through crime. Do the “tax alcohol more” brigade really believe that this will follow a different pattern?

There’s a toad that lives under our recycling bin. I discovered him by accident when putting the bin out a few weeks back. I picked him up and put him in the pond and promptly forgot about it. Two weeks later and when moving the bin out, there he was again. Once more we made the trip down the garden to the pond. Today, I gently lifted the bin before moving it and there was Mr Toad, lurking in the cool damp environs beneath. Now, why that bin? Why not the grey one? Is the green bin a des-res and the grey one less desirable property to let?

So, once more we go through the little ritual of putting him in the pond and during the next few days he will make his way back to his home under the recycling bin where he will bide the fortnight before his next eviction. Toads, it seems, are creatures of habit.

According to a report published by RSSB, rail is not necessarily the “green” option for long distance travel in the UK.

It can be greener to drive than catch the train, according to a rail industry study which reveals that trains are losing their environmental advantage.

Modern diesel-powered trains are so polluting that a family of three or more would be responsible for at least double the carbon dioxide emissions on many routes when travelling by rail compared with driving in a typical medium-sized car.

Ouch! A decade ago, the rail industry trumpeted its green credentials with some vigour – they managed to conveniently overlook the clouds of diesel wafting above Paddington station in favour of the volume of people carried for the cost of that pollution and that less land is required to contain a railway line than a motorway. All good stuff, but… The HST is now obsolete and being replaced with more modern and one would have thought, efficient stock, no?

The study concludes that the Virgin Voyager, the most advanced diesel train on the network, has the highest emissions of any British train and that its performance compared with cars is steadily worsening as motor manufacturers improve efficiency.

That’s a pretty dreadful indictment. Fuel and emissions efficiency shouldn’t be too difficult to manage – the automotive industry have been improving why not rail? Mention of the Voyager is to mention one of my least liked trains – the only one I despise more is the Adelante used on the Great Western main line. Both trains are cramped, cold, noisy, uncomfortable and cheap – and I don’t mean the cost, I mean they are shoddy. Frankly, If I have the choice of an Adelante now or an HST in half an hour’s time, I’ll wait the half hour for the improved comfort. The train operators have opted to reduce quality of ride and passenger comfort, which is bad enough, but that they have seen fit to buy stock that is no less fuel and emissions efficient despite over twenty years worth of technological advantage is a disgrace. Well, the TOCs, Angel Leasing or the government or all three…

The study, commissioned by the Rail Safety and Standards Board, urges the Government to electrify key sections of the rail network to allow greener electric trains to replace diesel ones. On several long-distance routes, such as London to Hull, diesel trains run long distances under electric wires because short stretches of track have not been electrified.

Having travelled on GNER’s electric stock, I can concur that this is a ride similar in comfort to the HST with an added bonus, electric stock is quieter. According to RSSB, going electric will be an overall benefit emissions wise:

The best-performing electric trains are operated by GNER between London and Edinburgh and emit only 40g of CO2 per passenger-kilometre (g/pkm) compared with 112g/pkm for Voyagers.

By 2022, more efficient power generation will have reduced the emissions of the GNER trains to 28g/pkm. But the emissions of the Voyagers, which are only five years old and are due to remain in service until after 2030, will be unchanged. On present trends, emissions from the average car will have been reduced from 131g/pkm to 98g/pkm by 2022.

Of course, the power still has to be generated and I assuming that RSSB have taken this into account. As with all things, though there is a downside. In the event of an incident requiring the power to be isolated, the train is stranded and all air conditioning goes off, which can be uncomfortable in extremes of weather. Still, one could always dig up one of those aging diesel locomotives and rescue it…

I notice in the comments to the article that the idiot factor has managed to get a word in. Step up to the rostrum Mr Malcolm McLean, prat of the day:

Once everyone has a car, everyone needs a car. Whilst the CO2 burn per mile might not be too favourable on the train, it encourages a less mobile society.

If Mr Fuckwit McLean wants to return to the middle ages, that’s entirely his business, but I’ll be damned if I’ll take lectures on what I should or should not be encouraged to do by some halfwitted misanthropic “greenie” on a mission. Go fuck yourself.

I’ve been unwell, so blogging has been light this past couple of days. However, I couldn’t let this one pass without comment:

Two Daily Mirror journalists were arrested today after trying to plant a fake bomb on a London Underground train.

The two men, one believed to be Mirror undercover reporter Tom Parry, were arrested this afternoon at Stonebridge Park depot, which is towards the northern end of the Bakerloo Line in north-west London.

They were caught carrying their fake bomb by railway staff who asked what they were doing on the premises and then called the British Transport Police.

They claimed, of course that this was in the national interest – you know, “public safety”. The reality is that they were wasting people’s time that would be better spent dealing with real criminals and genuine risks to public safety. The reality is that once more the British media exposes the slime in which it lurks. Public safety, my foot! This is about flogging more copies of the despicable little rag that employs them. Pair of twats is closer to the mark. I trust they will be vigorously prosecuted – some time behind bars would be in order.