[captainnemo]

In between the smiles and the bile and the professional insights a picture appears to be emerging....

It ain't just media hysterics, there are infection issues in our hospitals (the nature of the beast, in the same way there are violent and thieving individuals in our courts) and the health pros are affronted at any suggestion that they don't follow measures to combat these bugs. Evidently there is debate as to how effective such measures are and whether things were done better in the old days or whether rose-tinted specs aoutomatically come with 20/20 hindsight!!

Likewise food: apparently the golden age of wholesome nutritious stuff is a myth (though government statistics actually exist to suggest that the national diet during the last world war was actually surprisingly healthy) Maybe the 50s mum might have been overcooking some of the fresh food (frequently sourced locally on a near daily basis by the revolutionary method of walking up the High Street with a basket) The disappearance of so many local shops together with the concept of shopping daily for consumables has led to the development of supermarket 'convenience' foods....whose convenience exactly?

Sounds like the bottom line is nobody has all the answers because often the wrong questions are asked. Are we better off with rickets or type 2 diabetes, tuberculosis or ME, typhoid or MRSA? Obviously, 'none of the above' would be cool but people can be quite self-destructive and not everybody obsesses about what they eat, where it comes from and the level of exercise they do. Quite a lot of the people who put fish fingers and beans in front of the family do so in the belief that it's a decent meal (and there is not so much junk food, as a junk diet, usually caused by poverty) and under many circumstances it is.

Life doesn't have to be brutal and short, we can't do much about the longevity but the quality is in our own hands. Divers already have an advantage over many, we have a pastime that interests and unites us and allows us to see things that many never will....and occasionally disappointments, but hey, sh1t happens.

Some think that I deliberately set out to wind people up and to an extent that is quite true but only in the spirit of asking people to think. If we all posted the same anodyne, mutual congratulatory mush the forum would be a dull place. If Al Gore can get the Nobel Peace Prize for his intellectual exercise in mass delusion theory there is hope for all of us!!