HPV vaccine - another lottery?

Well done to West Kent Primary Care Trust for taking a proactive stance on HPV, or Human Papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted infection which can over time develop into cancer.

In the new school year, pupils in years 8 and 13 (ages 12/13 and 17/18) at schools in East Sussex and West Kent will receive preventative vaccine shots.

The actions of the PCT are of course to be applauded; anything which can save lives, and prevent the misery and heartache of cancer has to be worth exploring.

But I understand the vaccine is to be given to girls only, despite the fact that boys can also carry the disease. I see from this week's Kent and Sussex Courier (www.thisiskent.co.uk) that West Kent PCT has put the decision down to "prioritising funds for girls."

Why? God forbid that any young male should contract HPV, but how will he or indeed his family feel, knowing that he could have received the preventative vaccine?

It's probably me, but I really don't understand this.  Perhaps someone will explain it to me.

Is Chancellor Darling's luck about to run out?

So Chancellor Alistair Darling has given another interview - this time to The Guardian - which has proved damaging to the Labour Government. With the level of insight that only a Minister from an utterly disconnected and discredited Government can muster, Darling admits that the economy is at its lowest point for sixty years - as if we didn't know. He further points out with disarming vision and incisiveness that "people are pi**ed off with us."

My previous draft of this posting had implied that Darling was somehow daft. Yet apart from Jack Straw and Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling is the only other origjnal member of the front bench - promoted to front bench status after just twelve months in Parliament, and still on that bench twenty years later. So he can't be that daft.

Yet in his time at Number 11, it seems crisis upon crisis has 'happened around' Mr Darling. As the Guardian article states clearly (click here to view) he discovered that the European Bank was pouring money into the economy by reading a paper in Majorca; he says "no one had any idea" about the financial crisis. He was in Edinburgh when his staff rang him about the run on Northern Rock; apparently "no one knew how serious it (the credit crunch) was yet". When the Treasury lost the personal details of "just about every family in the country"; he says "we knew it was bad."

Mr Darling admits that, "as a minister, by and large I had a charmed life". With the current furore over Stamp Duty, a blistering lead for David Cameron's Conservatives in the polls, and Gordon Brown's "last chance saloon" of party conference season just around the corner, it will be interesting to see whether Chancellor Darling's luck is about to run out.

No change there then.

It's been great this week to catch up on recreational reading - much of it around my real interest - general aviation. And so I was interested to see in this month's "Pilot" magazine (click here) that this Government has also got its "we know best" talons into even this. It seems they have asked their "anti-terrorism expert", Lord Carlile QC to look at the 'potent cocktail' of terrorists and light aircraft (click here to read his report).

His findings, which have been reported to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, are that "light aircraft could be used by terrorists to launch attacks on buildings" after the style of 9/11.

Fortunately AOPA - the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association - has entered the debate in the person of Martin Robinson. He refers to the 9/11 terrorists learning to fly light aircraft (remember one in particular told his instructor he wanted to learn take off and flying, but not to bother showing him landing) and makes the valid point that if the light training aircraft in which they learned their skills flying skills could have produced the required amount of mayhem and carnage, they wouldn't have bothered to hijack fully laden airliners.

He adds "...to cause major damage, they needed large, heavy aircraft travelling at high speed with significant quantities of fuel on board. An incident involving an aircraft weighing as much as a Mini bouncing off a building was not what the terrorists were after."

So well done Government. Once again you've blundered around in an area about which you know very little, producing nonsensical recommendations which could curtail the harmless enjoyment of thousands of people.

No change there then.

All human life is here

This week has been fascinating. Boating - like so many other leisure activities - is a microcosm of society in itself, with all its hierarchies and its snobberies. There seemed a clear divide between those with sailing boats and those with powered boats. Then again, there is a difference between the "Red Ensign" boats, whose crew own their craft, and those of us who simply rented a boat for a week's break.

And among the flotilla of rental craft, it seems, size is everything. I was amused last evening by a hire boat moored next door, populated by a large family of even larger people.

The mother exclaimed loudly into her mobile phone "It's really cool, all the boats are parked here and we're the longest". She then passed the phone to her enormous and visibly disinterested child, who had just spent ten minutes arguing over more chocolate. He mumbled into the mouthpiece "It's great. We've got three toilets - one of them we're using to keep the food in".

All human life is here...

Our "European Masters"?

Visited the tiny village of Ludham in Norfolk today - just a pub, a butchers, and a general store, which did everything - Post Office, delicatessen, off licence and corner shop all in one.

A home-made sign by the fruit and veg proudly headed "Rule Britannia" exclaimed: "Due to our European Masters, we now have to sell our fruit and veg by kilos, not pounds and ounces. For your information, a kilo is roughly 2.2 pounds."

Reminded me of something Daniel Hannan MEP used to say - "In our brave new Europhile world, you cannot now buy a few ounces of cannabis. Not because buying cannabis is of itself illegal, but because you can't now buy it pounds and ounces!"

In these days of increasing globalisation, I wonder if "our European Masters" truly understand the day to day implications of their legislation, let alone care about the reaction of the public to it?

Adventures in Royland

Got up really early this morning and left Salhouse Broad en route to Wroxham. A friend whose relations lived in the area sent me an email telling me to "count the number of 'Roys' in Wroxham" and I didn't fully appreciate what he was saying.

Until I got off the boat and walked out of the mooring. I was in the car park of "Roy's Shoppers" department store. This was just opposite the toy shop "Roy's Children's World" which was next door to "Roy's Food Land". As I waited to cross the road I overheard passers-by discussing the mythical 'Roy' in hushed tones.

Clothes were in abundance - both at "Miss Royz" the boutique for the discerning young lady, and in the clothing department of the department store. Looking around, I noticed that I was surrounded by people who had eaten their 'Roy' breakfast and dressed entirely in 'Roy' clothing.

I'm sure Roy is a super chap, but it did make me think of Patrick McGoohan in "The Prisoner" - if you dared to shop anywhere else, would a huge white bubble chase you down the high street?

After an interesting 'Adventure in Royland', like the man from the News of the World, I made my excuses and left!

(click here to read the history of Roys of Wroxham)

Enterprise on the water

Up at 6.30 this morning, I pulled out of our Perci Island mooring at Horning around 7am, revelling in the "price of the morning" - it was gloriously warm and sunny first thing.

I slowly cruised at four miles an hour past the most wonderful houses; all of them with private moorings and boat houses, most of them thatched, all of them with manicured gardens leading down to the water.

Just an hour and Salhouse Broad came into view. A beautiful enclosed basin, defined in local guides as "Norfolk's closest thing to a swamp" - by which they meant the weather is somehow warmer, the water like glass (click here to view).

Having found a mooring - harder than it seemed, as I needed to tie up stern end on - I sat back to read in the sun.

And then I saw the Aldous Ice Cream launch - a man and boy in a small dinghy with a huge ice cream cornet on the front. Moving from craft to craft, they made a fortune selling wonderful home-made ice cream cones at £1.20 apiece, a fantastic example of enterprise on the water.