Tax chocolate to beat obesity?

Yesterday the idea of taxing chocolate as a way of beating obesity and diabetes was proposed by David Walker, a GP (family doctor) from Scotland.

Unsurprisingly many people took a dim view of this proposal, chocolate it seems is about much more than a sweet snack. Chocolate is eaten as much to change mood as anything else; typically it's eaten as aid to emotional well being not because we are hungry.

Putting a tax on something that is used to change our mood won't change consumption but will take more from the pockets of those who love chocolate.

The proposal ignores the underlying reason why we eat chocolate; it's only when we can deal effectively with the situation that causes low moods that consumption of sweet, fatty treats will reduce.

Why do students kill in their school?

Yesterday there was another case of a former student who went back to his school to kill teachers and children.

The 17 year old young man in Germany appeared to have no reason to be so angry that he could take the lives of others, so what is going on?

This latest mass killing is just another in a long line of student killings where the killer seeks to exact revenge on a real or imagined slight on their character. Invariably the killer himself (it is, so far always a male) is also killed.

In the past, some of these killers were on medications for depression or learning disorders and it prompts the question, did the medication make things better or worse? Did it hide what seem to be suicidal tendencies or did it make them more apparent?

Since any person embarking on such a mass killing knows that they are likely to killed themselves, it does appear that this is an extended version of what Americans call 'suicide by cop'. This is where a person engineers a situation that they know will end with their death through being shot by the police; for example by taking a hostage.

So is this a suicide where the person involved believes themself to have been so cheated by life that the only value they feel they have left is a posthumous notoriety that they will never be aware of?

What ever the reason it is a tragic aspect of the way we live today.

Is £93Million enough?

The UK Government recently announced an additional £13Million for mental health services to help them cope with the number of people suffering because of the economic downturn. This is in addition to the £80Million funding already provided to Primary Care Trusts.

But the question is, what will that £13Million buy?

If we assume that an average counselling or therapy session costs about £50 (for an hour) how many people will that £13Million help?

£13Million divided by £50 is 260,000 sessions. At 6 session per person that's about 43000 people that could be helped, assuming that none of that money gets swallowed up in administration (unlikley).

But with unemployment numbers set to top 3 million people this looks like a very half hearted response to the impending problem.

Even if just one in ten of those unemployed needed help that £13Million looks hopelessly inadequate. Compared to the vast sums being deployed to keep the banks afloat the difference is startling.

The term recession depression is likely to crop up a lot more in the news over the next 12 months.

Death, a policeman's perspective.

Death in the western world is still a taboo subject for many in spite of the increase in suicide.

It's not often that I read about it in a blog though and even less often would I be tempted to share it but this posting from the blog "A proper cup of tea" did make me stop and think.

Have a read...

Death

I have a rather grim sense of humour which is handy because so does everyone else in the police. It's good job too really, because if you didn't you'd crack up. In most other lines of work if someone were to announce that they'd come across a bloke with a burn on his face following an attack on him with red hot iron, you'd expect an outpouring of horror and concern. Announce it to the rest of your shift during a morning briefing at the nick however and you get the following response from your boss:

"Attacked with a red hot iron you say? Clearly that's a pressing issue."

"Well it could be. Personally I just think he was letting off steam."

And so it goes on, and everybody groans as the puns grow worse. It's not that people don't care or that they're insensitive, it's just that once you get used to going into houses that are carpeted with human and animal excrement, having to strip-search heroin addicts who haven't washed or changed their clothes for 3 months, or going to serious car accidents and then telling people that their nearest and dearest has just died, you kind of become a little bit indifferent to it all. If you actually stopped to think about how each and every assault, burglary or car accident really affected the lives of those involved, you'd break down and cry and never go to work again. The black humour becomes a defence mechanism and you don't bat an eyelid when the radio operator asks you to go to woods to look for a suicide victim who's been reported to be hanging around and scaring the local kids.

Nowhere is the ability to remain good natured and emotionally detached from your job more important than in dealing with death. I used to think that when you went to tell somone that one of their loved ones had died they'd be terribly British about it and nod politely, sit down, have a cup of tea and then mutter something like "Mustn't grumble. Next door had his leg bitten off by a crocodile last week. Terribly sore."

But the British stiff upper lip is rather more wobbly than you might imagine. You think that bereaved people wailing, screaming and hitting themselves over the head is something that only happens in far away countries but it happens in modern England too all the time, and being surrounded by a screaming, crying family from whose grief you are utterly and completely detached is a strange experience.

Even stranger is the way in which people die. I'd like to think that when I die it'll be nice and peaceful in bed surrounded by my family, although statistically I am far more likely to die of a heart attack while straining too hard on the toilet. I wish I was joking but toilet deaths are extremely common. Recently I went to a death where an 80 year old woman had died on the toilet and then sat there for a week before she was discovered. Then the time before that was another elderly lady who had been dead in bed for three days and laid there totally undisturbed by her slightly confused husband, who remarked that he thought she had been unusually quiet recently but that he didn't like to trouble her when she was resting.

Some people who have never had to tidy up the domestic (and literal) mess that a dead body brings can have a rather unhealthy fascination with the subject, but as far as death goes my advice would be to have as little to do with it as possible.

Busy on a new web page

I've been busy over the weekend revamping one of my web sites. In this case it's www.gift4life.co.uk (my main one is www.gift4life.com). The site used to have just a simple redirect to the .com address but I figured I was probably losing some traffic by not having something a bit more search engine friendly; but I have another reason to make the change as well.

I recently overheard a bank teller ask a man if he used on-line banking facilities. "oh no" he replied "that's far too risky" and went on to explain how a particular on-line incident had sworn him off this for good.

So it occurred to me that there are probably many people out there who prefer not to buy online but would still appreciate being able to get hold of relaxation and hypnosis CDs and DVDs by post. With this in mind I will be adding some information on the the www.gift4life.co.uk web site about ordering products by post, paying by cheque, credit/debit card and even postal order.

The site redesign is not finished yet but I'll be making changes to it over the next week or so. There will be some free resources as well as downloadable order forms to make life easy for those who prefer not give their card details over the internet.

IMPORTANT The www.gift4life.com site is a secure site powered by the industry leading software Actinic with all the payments handled by the UK based card processor Nochex. I have every faith in the security and integrity of the process.

The new site is simply a recognition that for some people, buying on-line will always be something they do not wish to do.

Why do we drink so much?

The Scottish government has recently proposed to set a minimum price for a unit of alcohol. This new approach is being described as a means of reducing alcohol consumption especially with 'problem drinkers'.

But while this makes alcohol more expensive it is unlikely to be a successful method of reducing consumption. Those people who drink to excess will continue to do so because what the politicians have failed to recognise is that for many people, alcohol is a form of self medication. Drinking is a way to deal with pressures in an individual's life. You can blot out just about everything with enough booze. Of course it doesn't fix the problems, but if the problem is so difficult to deal with that it seems impossible to change, then escapism can seem like a useful way out.

So if the politicians in Scotland really want to deal with drug use, (and alcohol is just another drug after all) it is the social conditions that must change. Attempting to deal with the alcohol misuse through a price increase alone is akin to dealing with the symptoms of a disease instead of the underlying cause.

I looked out the window and saw SNOW!

It still makes me feel like an 8 year child when I look out the window in the morning and see snow.

Just for a moment everyday cares and troubles are brushed aside by the luxuriant covering of pristine white snow. I check for footprints, I want to be the first, even the only person to make a mark on this new and transient environment.

Today I had some errands to run first thing in the morning and so I drove in the snow. What was so beautiful and white was quickly turning into a grey and watery slush but since I had a camera in the car I took a couple of pictures. The driveway in the picture leads to Montacute House near Yeovil in Somerset. It is owned by the National Trust and is open to visitors during the summer. You don't often see it covered in snow though.

The curse of 'The Course'

For some time now it has been almost fashionable to attend 'The Course'. Often these work sponsored training events are held in hotels or converted stately homes where attendance is a requirement from the company or organisation that employs the trainees.

Often these events are seen as little more than an irritation or an excuse for 'going on a jolly' by those who attend. Rarely do those attending a work based training event come back enthused by what they learned and all to often, little, if any change filters through to the workplace.

Donald Clark has written a powerful article on http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/ that rips into some of assumptions made about the positive outcomes available from group based courses. It's a good thought provoking read that seems to resonate with some of my own experiences of training days.

Some of the best personal training I have received has been in the 10 minute coffee break of a so called 'course' I was attending and that would be from a fellow 'trainee'. So much for 2 or 3 days of residential brain dumping. Read the piece by clicking this link.

What do your doodles reveal?

Doodling is often seen as a rather rude thing to do whilst in front of someone else. In the past it has been taken to mean that you are not paying attention to the conversation. However, recent research turns this idea on its head and shows that doodling whilst listening can actually aid memory recall.

Plymouth University conducted the study and the result was that doodlers tended to remember almost 50% more detail of a phone message than the non-doodlers.

But what do you doodle? Linear shapes like squares and cubes? Overlapping circles or wavy lines? Flowers or other natural objects? My recent doodles have included arrows and cubes.

I know graphologists will offer to interpret character traits from handwriting styles but has anyone done something similar for doodles?

Is failure the pathway to sucess?

I came across a great little article on the life hacker web site that I thought many people would appreciate.

In this time of job insecurity, it's good to be reminded that we all have skills that we can develop and use in new ways to start a new business or find a new career.

Check out the article here.