Censorship? NO!

When, oh when will people learn that censorship is rarely - if ever - the answer?

Yes, I know that the whole Winterval thing was supposedly a big commercial exercise gone badly wrong, but the Political Correctness brigade have really got a lot to answer for. Is it any wonder we live in a nanny state when no-one can air their opinions or write conversations which might cause offence?

I will grudgingly accept that arbitrarily injected profanity can cause offence - and so arguably should be censored for main-stream broadcast. But, for goodness sake! Fairytale of New York is part of the Christmas furniture .. along with Jona Lewie, Wizzard and Slade. Changing or blanking the words now is a real horse-bolted-door-close thing. Surely, everyone's heard it by now? Even if they had not - the language is in context. This petty PC censorship is like putting a bra on the Venus de Milo. The song is an argument between two lovers - the words reflect the passion and heartache involved.

What're they gonna do next? Will tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol get disability benefit? Perhaps he shouldn't be disabled at all! What? That'd change the story? Who cares - as long as no-one's offended? Wrong! Wrong I tell you!

Right. I will now relax and look forward to Christmas - having got that out of my system. More port and stilton required, methinks.

Just because you can ..

... doesn't mean you should.

Depressed? You should be†.

I've ranted about modern medical science before; and I'll no doubt have cause to rant about them again in future. It is a classical example of a self-supporting argument. The whole industry is geared up to find solutions and then apply problems to them.

This one takes the biscuit, though. Exercise does indeed have huge benefits to sufferers of depression. What these scientists fail to realise is that this is only partly a chemical effect.

Chemicals cannot replace the satisfaction of having achieved something. Precisely the opposite: anyone taking these proposed medicines will become even more dependent on someone else - the very people indending to help. So-say.

For goodness sake! If exercise helps: encourage it .. don't try to bottle it!

† Note that I'm not trying to make light of mental illness here. In fact, I'm trying to point out that the "experts" appear to be doing their best effort to ignore the seriousness of the issues.