Bonkers Blokes Need Needle Boost

How has this happened? Guys are getting IV drips just to cope with their busy lives. One bloke was so rushed he had his drip set up in the airport lounge. We are turning ourselves into needy patients desperate for nursey.

Lord, Botox seemed a step too far once. All of those needles injecting poison. Now it's regular IVs or we cease to function at all. Costing up to £600 a go, every fortnight, it's a nice little earner for the private clinics. 

Yes IVs do work. Party-fagged junior doctors have been known to set themselves up with a saline drip to get through the next 18 hour shift. It's the rehydration that does it, quickest way to replace lost fluid and salts. So they feel better fast.

Why the rest of us? We shouldn't need it, but bonkers blokes are getting the needle and swearing by the benefits. It's invasive, probably useless mind-bogglingly silly and the crutch of the terminally stupid. Wise up guys!

Can We Shut Out The Gunmen?

Shopping centres are getting nervy about attacks. They fear another  Nairobi, with good reason. The police have admitted their estimate of the number of guns held illegally in Britain is likely to be far short of reality.

So shoppers face random bag searches. That'll fix it then. We all know the terrorists hid their weapons in Matalan bags! All this will do is make more of us shop online. The malls are struggling as it is, stop and search will only drive us away.

What about cameras trained permanently on entrances, always making sure they are manned? At least that way the baddies would be spotted quickly. 

Then we should all get used to regular alarms, when shop doors will close automatically for five minutes. Anyone outside could go in when the alarm sounds. Those inside have five more minutes to hang around - and maybe buy something. Any problems and the doors stay shut.

That way you would limit exposure. Gangs of gunmen would not be able to roam. It would be a bore at first, but we would probably get used to it. It's an idea - what do you think?

Kenya Killings End All Hope

Yesterday we saw their blood. Today we see their faces, a happy couple, thrilled at the prospect of becoming parents in only two weeks time. They died with their baby, massacred along with at least one other pregnant mother, a gaggle of toddlers and so many more unarmed men and woman. At least 62 of them.

Your heart breaks for them all. Despair fills your soul. Then comes anger. What are these bone-headed terrorists actually hoping for? As they sit there, surrounded by death, do they think: " Well that showed them! They know what we can do now!"

We do. But why? What do they want. Support? No chance. Respect? Never. Fear? Well they got that, but then comes a compulsion to root them out, all of them, with their fundamentalist beliefs that leave no room for any kind of freedom.  

Most religions seek followers. They offer a path to enlightenment. Just what are this lot offering? 

Islam And Jesus Walk Hand In Hand

Can a Muslim be saintly? That's the only word that properly describes the husband and father who lost his wife and three children in an arson attack in London. This devoted and caring man refuses to blame. Instead he has pledged the rest of his life to helping others.

He's made a good start. As a neurosurgeon, specialising in children's illnesses, Muhammad Taufiq Al Sattar, is doing more than most. He worked in Dublin, getting back to his wife Shehnila and kids Zainab, 19, Bilal,17 and Jamil 15, three weekends out of four.

 He would have been there the night thugs turned his family home in Leicester into an inferno. Work kept him away. Bereft but unbowed, he refuses to be angry: "We are not supposed to be," he says, believing that his escape is due to God's will.

Dr Al Sattar looks like a religious man, an image that makes many of us nervy. We identify those bearded men as possible terrorists. We despise women who hide behind the veil and the men who make them.

But this doctor is showing us another side of Islam, one that gets overlooked in these deeply troubled times. All religions could learn from him, because a man more like Jesus never walked this earth.

 Dave's been caught napping again. Laid out on his sister-in-law's bed. Face ruddy, feet bare, he looks worn out, poor man. Still, who thought it was a good idea to make such a picture public? Had to be somebody close to him.

Same with the snap of the Prime Minister struggling to get out of his cossie under a Mickey Mouse towel. It made him look like a man of the people, but he could have done without it. We never see Ed that way. His brother David once got papped with a banana in his mouth. Never managed to live it down and it probably cost him the leadership contest. 

Ed learned that lesson well, but with his other popularity failings it's unlikely to help him much.

Weird how close friends and family can be so quick to show the world the relaxed side of celebrity - though nobody could have passed up the bare butt Prince Harry opportunity. With friends like these though ...

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Give Kids Like Daniel The Dinners

Are we for or against free school meals for little kids? Plenty of people are saying it's too expensive and the £600m would be better spent elsewhere. I give them one good reason why they are wrong - Daniel Pelka.

I find it impossible to forget the dreadful details of his death, but for those who already have, four-year-old Daniel was beaten, almost drowned, imprisoned in a filthy room and fed salt by his mother and her boyfriend. He died of massive head injuries.

But most of all he was starved. When he stole food at school his mother said he had an eating disorder and should be stopped. This, despite the fact that he weighed about one and a half stones when he died. How stupid were those teachers to believe her?

The fact is that if Daniel could have been guaranteed one decent meal a day, five days a week, he may have survived long enough for someone to help him. Not a certainty by any means, seeing as police were called to his house 26 times to deal with domestic violence and never thought to find out if children were at risk.

So give these little ones the food. After all, we were spending money on social workers and other professionals and a fat lot of good that did little Daniel. Not one bothered to talk to him. A free school meal for a chance of life - well worth the price I'd say.

Keep Kids Clued Up About Their Cancer Risk

Just as they are about to do their SATS kids will have a new test - for ovarian cancer. To settle their minds. So they know that, in the future, say when they are 40, they have a high chance of getting a disease known as the silent killer.

It's a test that will cost millions, but hey, money well spent! What sort of topsy turvey thinking is this? Why would any child just about to hit puberty want to be told that they have a high risk of developing cancer?Is life not tough enough without that?

Yet Dr Sue Gessler, a psychologist at UCL Hospitals says early testing would help women," to live with the uncertainty," adding, " If you test a girl before puberty it will let the child know, at whatever level they understand, that this is something that will happen to them in later life."

I'm sure that child will be immensely grateful to the likes of Dr Gessler, just as I was when I discovered at 14 that I had no need of the BCG vaccination as I had been exposed to TB in the past. I was sure I was going to die, probably within a week.

Was the information helpful? No, it was traumatic, and it all came down to bad communication. Think how this revelation of ovarian cancer would affect a ten-year-old, where the certainty is much more real, and you are talking of a crackpot idea at best, cruelty at worst with the risk of lifelong harm. You know what Dr Gessler ? - we don't want to know!

Jews Anger AT May's Badgers

Some Jewish people are upset with Brian May today because he used the word genocide in relation to the killing of badgers. They think the word belongs to them.

The Oxford dictionary defines genocide as "The annihilation of a race." May could have substituted race for species to support his argument, though genocide usually applies to people. The Jews say genocide refers to the Halocaust, and the murder of six million Jews.

They are right, it does. They find it offensive when used about badgers. The Jews have a terrible, traumatic, past. History has taught them to be wary of the rest of us, with very good reason.

But when they take offence at this sort of thing, or when they lambast Richard Dawkin for criticising the God of the Old Testament, saying that in doing so he is having a go at them, they are getting above themselves, by anyone's definition.

Cost A Lot Online

I so love the woman in the post office I've been traipsing round there twice today. She is so friendly and was wearing the most gorgeous top. Which I complimented her on. Made her blush actually.

It's not that I fancy her or anything! God no, I just found myself in there, returning stuff. That's online shopping for you. Time saved at the screen is wasted in the queue. Cash too. I've spent nearly a tenner sending two tops back, hence my interest in hers.

One was a present. Deep, warm, glowing, claret, oddly unusual bobbly texture, but massive and granny. I'll do any look but granny. The other was a Ghost designer thing, cut too low even for me and weird sleeves you can't push up. That's granny too then. It went.

Seems a bit much to have to pay postage twice, once to get it and again to send it back. We can't see exactly what it's like on a screen. Can't they take some of the blame for getting it wrong?

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Nasty Biters

"Tis the season of nits and general fleabyness." The poet had other ideas, but come September we all know  - they're back! The yellow letters from schools, " There's been an outbreak in your child's class , etc"

Not your child. Never that, though the poor mite hasn't seen a brush for six weeks and hair washing has been sporadic at best.The  lice have landed and chemists are doing a roaring trade in lotions and fine-tooth combs.

Then there's the dog. My son was hours old when I spotted a flea on him. In the hospital. Carted in by me the night before from our new flat, recently vacated by a large and very grumpy labrador.

The midwife visited  and shared the front step with a spaceman, kitted out in white suit, helmet and a tank on his back. Fumigating took hours and we all sat in the garden watching a flypast to commemorate the outbreak of war in September 1939.

We battled those beasties three times with our White Knight who told us he would be black from ankle to knee when dealing with really bad cases. Ours was a walk in the park, he said. Not to us. I wouldn't let my friend past the door in case she got bitten to death. She thought I'd gone off her. Sorry Edwina, it was those horrible, horrible fleas! Forgive me?

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Terror? Bring It On

Would you wish terror on someone? Terrorise them? I would. Take the rapist who collapsed when he discovered his victim has AIDS. He knew she was ill, but not what with. It could have been cancer, or kidney disease. Fine as far as he was concerned. So I'm glad he is now terrified.

What about Ariel Castro, the abductor of three young girls who hanged himself in jail?He was looking at life plus 1,000 years. That scared him, so he killed himself. Chances are that his last moments were pretty terrifying, especially if he believed he was about to meet his maker. Good.

I hope Stalin was terrified before he died, along with Hitler, PolPot and all like them. Even a few seconds of screaming, sweating terror can feel like a lifetime. With luck, Assad will be terrified when he meets his end, hopefully sometime soon.

If he wonders what that would be like, little children in Syria can tell him.They suffer that terror every minute of their waking lives. It should be visited on him and his murderous family, 100,000 times over. 

Forest Schools Full Of Whinge and Wonder

As someone who never saw a squirrel until she was 19, walking down a leafy lane is never taken for granted. Now kids from my neck of the woods will be up to their necks in the woods and I applaud it.

They will spend two days a week getting scruffy with nature. I was born on Tyneside and my two mile walk to school was pavement only, with a few, straggly, privet hedges the only green I saw along the way.

Forest schools, big in Denmark, are now coming to Benwell, one of the poorest parts of Newcastle. Memory suggests they may have to bus the 4 to 11-year-olds to the woods. Once there, they will spend six hours, two days a week, climbing trees, chucking feathers about and messing with leaves and twigs. The rest of the time they must learn other stuff in ordinary classrooms.

For the average whinging four-year-old, with frozen hands and chapped cheeks, six hours may be too long. It would have been for me. The winds blow hard and rain falls horizontal on Tyneside. Spring comes late. Still, I would have seen a rabbit, other than the one kept in a hutch at the bottom of our council house garden. And an acorn. A fircone. Or singing silver birch. So bring it on and let them whinge.

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