Move Along, Nothing To See Here!

As we head towards an election, the fate of the western world hangs by a thread.
Actually, it doesn't, but that's what they'd have you believe.
At such times, rampant scaremongering tends to be the case - after all, the safe choice is the best choice, and you're safe with us™© !
So it comes as no surprise when I read the news ( on the BBC website, no less) that 80,000 people in the U.K. might die if an infection resistant to antibiotics appeared.

So basically, nothing has actually happened and the postulated infection doesn' t even exist.
Phew, huh?
I thought we were goners for sure !
Thank goodness then, for the National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies: because the statistics come from their offices.
Another redundant government initiative, you cry ?
Okay, I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt here- it may well be the case that the NRRCE (couldn't they get someone to sex-up the acronym even a little ? ) are preparing for a worst case scenario - but why is this presented as news ?
Slow day for news , perhaps ?

They say that there is no smoke without fire, and there is a movement complaining of the lack of new antibiotics, i.e. resistance to all available medicines has reached a high point, so we need more, new antibiotics.
Of course, there is another thread that says Big Pharma would happily keep plying us with medicines because there's more money in medicine than there is in cures...when last did we cheer as a cure was found ?
Certainly the dread TB, once thought eradicated , seems to be re-emerging: and then there's the anti - vaccine brigade, pushing back decades of progress in the fight against childhood maladies.
Many people, myself included, are reluctant to take anti-biotics on the grounds that they swiftly stop being effective.
It is of benefit to  maintain a strong immune system (something I adhered to  until I was diagnosed with MS, a condition in which the immune system fights itself ).

But this post was not originally about the medicines, or shortcomings of the much maligned NHS.

It was about misdirection, in which a casual interest in the news led to a pointless piece of statistical scaremongering.

In hindsight, I might 'spike' this piece, with the ominous words ' needs more zombies'

Easter Bunnies and Chocolate Eggs

This is an image I posted elsewhere in honour of this day of celebrations.
Be they the turning of a bird into a rabbit, fertility rites, or even the resurrection tradition of Abrahamic myth.
From hollow chocolate eggs and bunnies to the risen Lord, there should be room for all forms of celebration in the spring.
I hear repeated anger from atheists that the (old testament probably) Bible condones rape, pillage and murder and suchlike.
Of course, it does - the Talmud was also pretty grisly and the vengeful God thing is a thread passing down through millenia.
The 'scriptures' did not interrupt some idyllic, utopian paradise - of that I'm pretty sure.
The weakest link in the chain is humanity.
Faith can move mountains.
It can also lead to the execution of non-believers.
As a species,we are capable of horrific acts of cruelty .
We are territorial.
We are egotistical.
Yet we are also capable of creating great beauty, capable of acts of kindness, capable of driving our own evolution in a search for better.

Personally, I feel that the act of placing yourself in the care of a greater spirit-based and potentially non-existent being is equal to abnegating yourself, and absolving  responsibilities for individual actions (just ask for forgiveness!).
At its worst, it creates mob mentality, justifying outrageous behaviours.
Then there are the thorny issues of literal interpretations of scriptures , which give rise to schisms , cults, and persecution .
Ultimately, who is right ?
Are the atheists right, with their preference for empirical truth born of scientific rationale, and evidence based reality ?*
Are the worshippers of a patriarchal monotheistic creator god right ?
Are the pagans with their old ways and many shades of magic right ?
What is right ?

And who says the Pope is infallible ?
In Reformation England 1550 , there was a great resistance to the adoption of the Julian calendar on the grounds that it was driven by the Pope, who had previously been named as 'The Antichrist'.**
Protestant and Catholic traditions continue to create divisions - I  fell foul of these divisions in my Scottish childhood.
"Celtic or Rangers ?" was a frequent question, the wrong answer to which resulted in violence.
Far from being a football issue, of course, the question is born of sectarian division.
I remember as a youngster being confused by all of this, up to the point where I would gaze out of the window of our flat in Edinburgh, wondering why we couldn't go outside when the Orange men were marching.
I even wondered whether the name was because they drank orange juice.


* ...of course, the entire fossil record was actually falsified.

** Thomas Cranmer, John Knox and a slew of Lutherans, but also Anabaptists and Methodists upheld this belief...