Posts by Rob Hosking
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My relations with all my neighbours have been entirely cordial -- right up to the point where they were arrested, or when they contracted a life-threatening disease from a duck that I'd allegedly "encouraged",
Right, that's the last time I read a Hayward piece while drinking tea. Straight down the nostrils.
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A few points:
Some research by - I think - Dr Ros Vallings a few years ago on women with CFS who got pregnant had a rough 40-% got better, 40% no change and 20% got worse.
I've seen other research which showed virtually all sufferers had had some major viral infection in the previous 12 months. Glandular fever was the most common single condition - 54% is the figure which has stayed in my memory, with a range of other viruses being scattered around the remainder.
Some very recent research appeared to have isolated a specific virus but the last thing I heard about that was that this was a long way from being conclusive.
One of the most common behavioural factors I've noticed - and I'm not suggesting this is in any way definitive - is that most people I know with the condition have not been listening to their bodies. This is across a range of behaviours - compulsive exercisers, yuppies, or junk food junkies.
I've had a bit of experience with CFS because I got it at Uni a year after having quite a bad bout of glandular fever.
Had it for a bit over three years and the next four years or so were more than a little sub-optimal.
I was lucky in some ways because I didn't have the fibromyalgia a lot of people get and also, obviously, because I managed to recover.
I've known a few other blokes with the condition - mostly trampers, funnily enough but that may just reflect the people I know. But yes, I certainly know more women with the condition than men.
Including the woman I'm married to. Claudia came down with it not long after we started going out together although - as with most people - she had a year or two of other diagnoses before they settled on CFS.
Quite bad fybromyalgia, too. She had to stop working and sell her business.
We decided to try for a kid because, firslty, we really wanted kids, and secondly we looked at the odds I cited from the research above and thought we'd take our chances.
Well, she didn't get better, but at least she didn't get worse. It was a troubled pregnancy and our daughter is special needs (autism and global developmental delay).
I suppose we may know one day if her condition is anything to do with having both parents having suffered CFS although for myself I'd rather not know. Not a lot we can do about it now.
Personally I'm kind of glad I had CFS because I know what Claudia is going through.
There is a whole heap of crap associated with this condition, as Emma and others have so eloquently testified here. And as I say, I'm one of the lucky ones.
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Paul C wrote:
Umm Kyle, that wouldn't happen to be a relative (of mine) with the stick would it?
Would that be Gregor?
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there's no such thing as an unloseable election especially if you're too thick to realise just how dangerous complacency is. Second, anyone who seriously believed that the polls six months back were going to translate into a uniform 15-20% swing to the Tories needs to spend some time getting their meds sorted.
Not arguing with you there: simply stating that there's a fair chunk of Conservatives who feel that way and that diminishes Cameron's ability to get 'em to gulp down the odd dead rat or two.
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If anything, the Lib Dems might be smarter to not not do a coalition deal with anyone -- but actually walk the talk and publicly lay out the circumstances under which they'd pull the plug on any government without batting an eyelid..
I suspect that's the most likely outcome, if only because neither Brown nor Cameron are in a very strong position.
Brown because of his poor performance in government recently, his bad campaign, and the fact that a fair chunk of his party have been scheming over who gets the leadership after this election for over a year now.
Cameron because he's managed to blow what looked like, only a few months ago, an unloseable election.
Brown or Cameron have to be able to take their respective parties with them in any deal. And right now neither of them have huge clout.
Cameron more than Brown because he's got a party behind him which would rather like to be in power again - 13 years is a long time. But could he take his party with him on PR? I very much doubt it.
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Bloody hell. I tune into the BBC World Service for an update, and guess who's being interviewed, telling the Brits what to do in a hung parliament?
Winston Peters.OK, that is funny.
Of course, they had to go a long way, to the other side of the world in fact, to find someone with experience of proportional voting systems and permanently hung Parliament.s
Its not as they have a whole continent next door with decades of experience or anything </sarcasm>
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It's probably my small-c conservatism kicking in, but is that a bad thing? American politics is full of people who are ten pounds of "convictions" in a five pound bag -- unfortunately, they should be of the criminal kind and so seldom are.
Yeah, I'm a small c conservative on these things as well.
But I wasn't really talking about ideology or even specific policies, (or even their absence); just about watching the guy's eyes. Which is why I used the term 'vibe'.
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Oh and my pick is for the Conservatives to have an absolute majority, but not much of one - 15-20 seats.
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The Jeremy Thorpe case did at least have one happy pay off - this classic satire on the judge's summing up from Peter Cook:
Loved that Charlie Brooker piece Giovanni linked to - I get a similar vacant vibe off Cameron. Just a sense of not a lot there in terms of conviction.He doesn't give me the same bad impression Blair did - the first time I saw a clip of Blair speaking I felt the hair on the back of my neck go up and I said to whoever I was with 'this bloke's a total charlatan'.
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O holy snapping arseholes Martha!*
Mental picture of nether regions and enraged, halo-wearing crocodiles....