What A Wormful World

What a President! Not Obama, or Clinton, but good old Jimmy Carter. He's got the job done, accomplished what he said he would. He's helped eradicate Guinea worm and that really is a Big Deal.
Not impressed? What's one little worm, after all? What if I tell you that this worm is ingested in dirty drinking water, It grows to a metre in length and then makes it's way out through the skin, often the foot, which gets so painful that people soak it in water to ease it. Out comes the monster and lays again.
Jimmy first saw it many years ago when he went over to a handsome African woman nursing a baby to say friendly hello to her child - and realised it was not a baby at all but a disgusting worm emerging from her nipple. Her nipple! She went on to have another 25 worms.
Jimmy decided to get rid of Guinea worm once and for all. He helped dig wells so that the water became clean. Now there were only 126 cases at last count, down from thousands each year.
Well done Jimmy - but thumbs down to God for creating such a creature in the first place. He sure has a warped sense of humour

Save Our Surgeons

What does it feel like to  squeeze a teenager's heart in your bloodied hands, focused, determined, willing it to beat and then watching the life slip away?

Surgeon Ton Konig did just that in a speeding ambulance, ripping open a chest while trying to save a 17-year-old stab victim. He failed - and that failure will live with him forever. He will never, ever be able to forget it.

What do we ask of our medics? A nurse on last night's Panorama told of the moment he almost walked out into the night during a hectic shift, physically and emotionally unable to take any more. These are human beings, pushed to the edge of endurance by what we ask of them.

Time to take control. Stop asking for miracles and start taking much better care of ourselves. Stop wasting their time with silly, trivial stuff that could be sorted with a paracetemol and a plaster.

Above all, put the knives down. leave all that cutting to the people who do it best - those brilliant, but badly-treated surgeons.

British Kids Abandoned

We care for kids abroad and abandon those on our doorstep. It is a tragedy that we allow Welsh schoolchildren to be so badly treated. No pupils - that's right, none at all - are getting an A* in English in  a quarter of Welsh schools.

How has it come to this? A whole generation getting a crap edcucation, ranked among the worst in the world. I blame the teachers. We have two in this house, so I'm well aware of the poressures, but the teaching in Wales is abysmal.

They are failing so badly and nobody does anything. One reason is the Welsh language. A good English teacher wanting to work in Wales has to be able to speak Welsh. Who could be bothered?

So the brightest and best of a nation are missing out. Doomed to a life of failure and lack of opportunity. Labour is in charge in Wales. Ed should get his stupid head around what his useless party has done and then hang it in shame.

Tainted Bishop

Utterly repellent! The Church should be deeply ashamed and disgusted with itself! Why? Because they still see women as "tainted." Unbelievable!

It comes as  Archbishop Sentamu prepares to appoint the first woman bishop next week. so far, so good, if so very, very late. But then, the week after, he will not "lay hands" on  another bishop, the Rev Philip North, because somehow his hands would still carry a stain and traditionalists would not accept him.

How appalling is that! It is jaw-dropping in its utter contempt for the right of the Rev Libby Lane to become the first woman bishop. A reminder - this has been voted for and finally agreed. The Church said yes.

To still see women as somehow unclean and in their words, " tainted," harks back to the middle ages and reflects the skewed thinking of much of the Arab world today. It's an outrage.

Party Prats

A kid fails to show at his friend's party - and gets an invoice for non-attendance! How much is Julie Lawrence regretting that now? Miffed that her five-year-old was slighted, she goes well overboard and wants her money back.

Every playground is a pratfall waiting to happen. So easy to get it wrong and have the whole shebang blow up in your face. Best advice I ever got was: "You'll have more rows over your kids than anything else. Leave well alone!"

Did I listen? Of course not. Waded in more than once. The kids made up instantly, but the mums? Well that took longer.

So Alex didn't fancy the Ski Slope, wanted to go to his gran's instead. Lots of lads of his age would. Save that exciting stuff for the eight-year-olds, I'd say and keep your cash, because the parties only get more expensive. Julie could've done with that advice, but would she have listened? No way.

Suffer the Children for Islam

It's jail for the young lad, "in contempt of Islam." Three years banged up in Egypt. Hell's bells their cells must be bursting at the seams! Is there room for one more?

Plenty of contempt for Islam about right now and we all know why. They are sending ten-year-old girls off to be suicide bombers. Not enough devout young men then? All those celestial virgins no longer the catch they once seemed?

What do little girls get - a chance to swing upon a shiney star? Just suppose all religion is a lie, as I believe it to be. What have these morons got left in their lives?

No one has any proof of an after-life, but brain-dead fundamentalists are all too willing to cut short this one, using terrified little girls. Jesus would have wept.

Whose God Demands This ?

So sad for the journalists mown down by madmen in Paris. These are my people, I've worked with many like them and trust me, they are the most generous, kind and, even more than anything, fun folk that you could wish to meet.

They were courageous too. Police stood outside to protect them and were murdered for their pains. These were workers who turned up at the office every day knowing it could well be their last.

Their last moments were horrific. They paid in blood for so-called insults. What God demands that? It took a while to shoot 12 people in cold blood. More may well die of their injuries.

God knows what is the answer to this carnage and he's not saying, but then, he never does, does he?