EACH MAN TO THE DEVIL HIS OWN WAY

I hear that some bright spark has come up with the crackpot notion of paying people to lose weight and stop smoking. Speaking as someone who is at the moment overweight and who used to smoke I can not help wondering how this could possibly work. I finally stopped smoking with no help from pills or patches because I wanted to. No amount of bribery would have persuaded me to stop including the constant increase in the cost of smoking. I can not say much about losing weight as I have for most of my life been considered dangerously thin,In the last two years I have gone from having my G.P complaining about my thinness to having her moaning on about the fact that I have put on too much weight. I wish that the medical profession would make up it,s mind. On the one hand they tell us to stay slim and fit, not to drink or smoke so that we shall live longer and our self inflicted ailments shall not be a drain upon the N.H.S then in .the next breath they tell us that there are far too many elderly people with age related diseases such as Altzhiemers and arthritis. You couldn't make it up.
Then again what about the people who take part in extreme sport,or indeed any sport. Poor Freddie Flintoff is a right off and he is still quite young. Are we going to penalise sportsmen too? Many jobs come with an occupational risk, even typing but who is moaning on about the huge numbers of people with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, incidentally why not oblige employers to contribute to the cost of such work related conditions?
It is much easier to always attack the little man or woman in the street ,to constantly bombard us with one health scare after another.
Even those who diet and exercise are not immune to this type of pressure. For years we have been told how bad for us dairy products are, they make you fat,they are high in cholesterol,you will have heard the type of thing. So the public,particularly the female public have refrained from eating these things to such an extent that large numbers of young women in their twenties are afflicted with osteoporosis, normally a disease of the elderly. People who jog are finding themselves with major damage to their knee joints.
So what is the answer? Quite simply there isn't one. The unfortunate fact is that living is what kills us all. Just imagine the chagrin of the habitual jogger,dieter,gym fanatic e.t.c. when he discovers that for all his hard work he is not immortal. Give up all the nice naughty things and you do not live much longer, it just feels a lot longer One way or another the Grim Reaper is “gonna gecha gecha gecha”it is simply a question of when.
If all this sounds terribly depressing it is not meant to . Human nature left to its own devises is inclined to optimism, fun and enjoyment of life, this is natural.
We are, for various, often cynical reasons being manipulated into becoming a nation of health obsessed ninnies. One moment we should not eat junk food, now that the cuts are about to bite is will only be a matter of time before we are being told that they are not so bad after all, wait and see.

Governments throughout history have attempted to control their people with the threat of hell fire, and now that threat does not work so well they must find new ways of keeping us all in our place.
In the words of the great Freddie Mercury,”Who wants to live forever” so "Don't Fear The Reaper" and just enjoy the life you have. What is bad for you this year may be a miracle cure the next.

I make no apologies for this rant,life is much to short to spend it worrying about how you are going to die so get out there and grab all the fun you can get

Here endeth the lesson.