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Don't you love British journalism? Nothing's worth
reporting unless it's in the worst possible light. Well, since everyone's
scribbling about swine flu, here are my pork scratchings.
Next door to me lives a picture-postcard British busybody.
She is fifty-something, single, a school teacher, raised in the country,
bosomed like an opera singer and utterly-and-totally opposed in principle to
absolutely anything that anyone else does. Honestly, I have to tip toe out to
water the rhododendrons in the evening in case she's there, leaning on the
fence like a builder on a shovel, ready to tell the world where it's going
wrong.
"Rhododendrons? Oh no! they grow everso big - they'll
shade my garden and I won't have that!" (they're in a pot and have reached
an impressive 9 inches high. The local ants nest haven't even complained)
"Did you take a photo of Aaron in his garden?"
"Yes" (Aaron is 9, I talk with him every day, I've met his mother, I
was teaching him about cameras) "That's illegal now without permission -
there was this man on Hampstead Heath and you just don't know these
days..."
"Look at this rain barrel, it's terribly in my way,
there's nowhere else for it to go, it will fall on me for sure and you know
what the hospitals are like!" (Well, you bought it and put it there.)
Anyway, she's just the sort of harridan that our media is
written for - the kind of person who can't possibly believe that anything is
significant unless it's the source of misery and angst for someone - not so
much a scandalmonger as a scandal sorcerer - a source of scandal. I expect you
know one, too - the kind of "oooOOOOooo - fancy that!" sensationalist
who should never be let near The Daily Mail like you should never let a child
near blue fizzy drinks.
Anyway. Mexico. Swine flu.
"oooOOOOooo! It's going to be a pandemic. Fancy that!
What, with hospitals the way they are and all these immigrants, you just don't
know WHAT you're eating these days, the last thing we need is a pandemic. Mr
Thorn the postman had a pandemic once and his foot swelled up. AND there's a
recession."
And there's a case in point - the recession. Did you know
that the average humbug-sucking "send-em-back"
"there's-a-paedophile-on-every-street-corner" village busybody has
curbed their purchase of a box of Jaffa Cakes every other Wednesday on the
grounds that the US seasonally-adjusted GDP has shown month-on-month shrinkage
for 1 quarter. Well, the papers had to report something, didn't they?
Let's get this into perspective. A pandemic comes about
when a new strain of infection shows a steady infection rate in more than one
community. So, if a headlouse grew another leg, there would technically be a
pandemic in every other school in Britain. If 'Razzling White' brought out a
new version of high-alcohol cider, I can guarantee that more than one council
estate would see a fair share of deaths in a short space of time but is that
newsworthy? I digress. Nearly 100 people have died from swine flu. Personally,
I'm more worried that the human population will go up by another 1.2 billion in
the next 20 years but that's another story.
I work in journalism. Here's some conjuring for you.
First, take a few facts:
Just over 100 people are dead from flu
5 people in the UK have mild symptoms but are getting
better.
The World Health Organisation has raised the status from 3
to 4 (6 being the 'pandemic' that no one understands)
The UK already has enough vaccine stock piled to treat 33
million people
The vast majority of people who catch it will suffer a few
days of fever
Here are some headlines you won't have read:
"Swine flu - death-rate slows down."
"Pig-Sick - Does pandemic status make any difference?"
"Pork-fever - British casualty says he will be back at work
tomorrow." "Bacon-Plague: Tesco stocks up with LemSip."
Here are some I DID read:
"H1N1 sweeps into Britain - UK prepared to treat half
the population"
"Swine flu goes pandemic - tens of people
infected"
"Glaxo shares go up on the back of Mexico
plague"
For flip's sake! Talk about hyping a market. I can't wait
until "Dispatches" makes a documentary on it...
"Revealed - the people who tried to escape from their
office when Pedro sneezed ran down a fire escape just like the ones that might
have been built by uninsured Polish labourers. It had steps - just like the
ones in the World Trade Centre. Their children (who were at school) could
possibly have been at home playing truant, watching downloaded porn, being
obese and choking on their toys while being photographed by Romanian drug
traffickers - but they weren't. As they rounded the last corner of the fire
escape, there were sharks and crocodiles... with food poisoning."
Am I scared? When I see pigs fly.
Come to think of it, "Swine flu".
OK. Now I'm scared. I'm going to the garden to build an
Anderson shelter under the Rhodedendrons and I'm NOT going to get planning
permission.
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Honestly - I've been up to my ears with it today.
One Texan is near tears because the local WalMart is out
of face masks. But my favourite piece of media-driven panic is that the stock
price of pork has dropped by 10%. Why? H1N1 travels from human to human and
only bears a tentative similarity to the virus carried by Pinky and Perky.
Therefore, running out into the fields in camo-trousers, armed to the teeth and
ready for a bit of Porcine ethnic cleansing makes about as much sense as
bombing Deutschland because of a bout of German Measles.
News footage this morning shows the first victim of Swine
Flu - a rather skinny-looking Mexican boy who is now up and about and playing
football. When asked how he felt he said "Fine, but I had to stay in bed
for two days." If this is true, then most of the teenage population of the
UK suffer from H1N1 every weekend.
The media agencies are advising which news channels to use
for balanced accounts of the yet-to-be-defined 'pandemic'. The BBC seems to be
the best for relaxed coverage, advising a stiff cup of tea and an afternoon's
croquet. Al Jazeera says that there is actually nothing to fear and that
Americans should feel free to cross the border into Mexico. It also said they
should inject drugs, share needles and use hair-driers in the bath.
A quick glance at www.worldometers.info (realtime global
statistics) shows:
331,000 deaths from Malaria this year,
590,000 from alcohol
2,500,000 from cancer
200,000 deaths during childbirth
19,800 from hunger TODAY ONLY
and, at 547 billion dollars, the total global expenditure
on healthcare is only 4 times more than
the total global expenditure on illegal, recreational drugs.
Now, what about pig flu? 49 deaths and 170 cases of
sniffles and runny backsides. Total spending: 500 bottles of NightNurse and
double-digit growth for Kleenex - unless you live in Texas, where John Boy is
in the rocking chair on the front porch with a shotgun on his lap, waiting to
shoot anything with a curly tail in a sombrero.
All very silly. Still, something had to pose a bigger
threat to the population of underdeveloped countries than Madonna and Angelina
Jolie. I wish Ozzy Osbourne would hurry up and eat another celebrity pet and
give me some funny headlines again. Recession and Pandemic don't even
spellcheck on a text phone - flip knows what modern youth make of it all.
So, for the benefit of most British teenagers, for whom
"grammar" is the title of a 30-year-old in a council flat who once
gave birth to your mother, here are some simple rhymes with which you may bring
yourself abreast of current affairs:
This little piggy went to Mexico
This little piggy stayed at home
This little piggy bought all the face masks
And this little piggy had none
And this little piggy went "wee wee wee wee wee"
all the way to Fleet Street.
Tom Tom the piper's son
Stole a pig and away did run
The pig had flu
So Tom did too
And had Lemsip for a day or two.
My Bonnie lives over the ocean
My Bonnie lives over the sea
My Bonnie just flew in from Mexico
So I'm not touching him with a barge pole.
Wee Willy Winky runs through the town
Upstairs and downstairs in his surgical mask. etc.
Sigh.