Cancer Equals Hysteria

Cancer! Say the word and it immediately conjures up a hysterical reaction in most people. This isn't necessarily all their fault, a major catalyst is the media. A report was released today from the World Cancer Research Fund outlining how lifestyle factors can help to prevent cancer, thereby suggesting that people are currently significantly contributing to their own demise. The main recommendations of the report are that certain types of food should be avoided such as alcohol, sugary drinks, red meat, bacon and ham; everyone should be exercising each day; weight should not be gained through adulthood; and even people with a Body Mass Index of just under 25 should try to lose some more weight. Forgive me, but does this perfect person actually exist?! If they do, I'd like to meet them and shake them by the hand. We lead hectic, pressured lives nowadays in a world which is riddled with imperfections; how are people meant to adhere to these stringent lifestyle regulations when they are perpetually accompanied by long working hours, family commitments, money worries, and (heavens forbid) the opportunity of a social life? And the media does not help! Today's news reports have almost entirely focused on negativity; cancer has been portrayed solely as a "matter of risk" for people to deal with themselves. It is not mentioned that two-thirds of cancers are NOT preventable, you can get them regardless of what you eat, just like you can sometimes get lung cancer without ever having smoked a cigarette; these non-preventable cancers amount to a whopping seven million cases per year which the reports have not taken into account. It's no wonder that people get hysterical with worry when they are near enough blamed for getting cancer themselves even though this is often not the case; and let's not forget that stress will make any condition worse given the opportunity, the media certainly don't help with that. So I leave you with a quote from cancer specialist Karol Sikora which I wholeheartedly concur with: "The main message I would have is not to worry about it, to enjoy life, if you like a glass of wine have it". Hear hear.

Negotiation And Manipulation

Difficult Issues

The postal strikes are continuing unabated with no end currently in sight. The sides are now even becoming petty as the Royal Mail accuses the Communication Workers' Union of talking "cobblers"! The ability to compromise is apparently impossible on both sides. But surely this is not the way to behave. As much as I loathe the way in which competition in capitalist business structures cause the workers to lose out to unsocial working hours, insulting wage increases and a domineering attitude from managers, strike action will never be the solution. If an organisation were to give in to the strikers' demands then a precedent would be set which would be extremely difficult to reverse: every time the workers had a grievance they would simply strike, get their demands granted and the business would quickly sink without trace for being uncompetitive causing everyone to lose their jobs. I also don't believe that the postal workers are gaining a great deal of sympathy with the general public as more and more post gets delayed in a backlog which will inevitably cause some of that post to go astray; it's certainly not a situation that I'm happy with! Surely a more intelligent line of attack would be to exploit the fact that Trade Unions are a major source of funding for the Labour Party. If the CWU made a pledge that all of its members were immediately switching their allegiance and their money to the Liberal Democrats, the government would go into a panic-stricken frenzy in order to solve the conflict. Just a suggestion, I really wouldn't expect anybody else to come up with anything that bright. However, I'm not trying to make these issues sound simple and I certainly don't support the fat-cat bigwigs and their typical coercive tactics, but in the current climate of people getting increasingly irritated at not receiving their post, it will only take one cheap and efficient competitor to close in on the domestic postal-service market for Royal Mail to vanish from people's minds like an old memory.












Patronising Politics

Gordon Brown has recently indulged in (or at least failed to damp down) profligate speculation on whether a General Election was going to be called. After seeing the Conservative Party do so well at their conference and the subsequent polls, the Prime Minister elected to restrain himself, lying to the general public by telling them that this was the decision he would have made anyway. But it gets even worse from the Labour spin doctors. During the Tory conference, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne had been forced to unveil a policy (due to the possible looming election!) of increasing the threshold of inheritance tax. Now that the election is not happening, Chancellor Alistair Darling has released his plan in his pre-Budget speech today to - surprise, surprise! - increase the threshold for inheritance tax, apparently something he had planned on doing all along. What a coincidence! Exactly how stupid are British people meant to be nowadays? This sort of political manipulation is abhorrent and is something I was hoping Labour would get away from now that Tony Blair had cleared off to Europe. Seemingly this is not to be, and for the time being politics will continue in its condescending lunacy.