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When Governments want to Sticky-beak

You know, whenever a government department uses the words “more convenient”, “safer” and “more secure” in a sentence, you can be sure that it is not trying to do you a favour. These are buzz words designed to make you think they are, but the reality is they want something from you that ordinarily you might baulk at providing, so rather than say so outright, it couches the request in something that sounds like it just wants to make your life easier.

It doesn’t. What it wants is for you to pave the way for it to sticky-beak into your affairs, not because you may be up to no good, but simply because it wants to have that option and if you have handed over access without realising how far that department intends to delve into your life, you will a) never get it out again and b) have no comeback.

Biometric data (voiceprint, facial scans) is one of the worst things you can agree to give, so don’t. Right now you may be being asked by some government department or other to “volunteer” one or both of these as a “safe” and “secure” way of communicating with the department, but down the track the “voluntary” option will be removed. Either supply it or have no access unless you appear on site in person. Many may view this as inconvenient, and that’s because it will be, so many will just hand it over. It has begun here in Australia with those on social benefit payments, and while it is still a voluntary thing at this point, that will change.

People are also being asked to link their government services as well, like their health record (if they haven’t opted out of that) to their government pension or benefit etc, etc, etc. Which will then give the Home Affairs Minister, or any other government department everything they need to take a really good look at you, even though they have no valid reason to do so.

Which is what makes the plan to introduce a Counter Terrorism (temporary exclusion orders) Bill a bad idea, as it is Step 1 in pushing through legislation to allow this particular minister to sticky-beak on us. Any of us. And how would a counter terrorism bill do that? In another attempt to get the controversial Bill passed, the news has just been conveniently released that 40 jihadists have returned to Australia, it just doesn’t say when they returned and for all we know, they could have done so quite a while ago. So while the Bill, technically speaking, means those who did a midnight flit to go and fight with ISIS and the like have to cool their heels overseas while their intentions to return to Australia are assessed (which would take around two years), what, we have to ask, of the ones already here? Personally, I think if they nicked off overseas to commit atrocities under a terrorist flag, they can just stay there, but some have arrived back home and this is where the Bill has big potential to become Step 1, because the Minister is going to claim the government needs to keep tabs on them, so we need the tech that will allow him to do so on home soil and this will open the door to the government (him actually) getting access to anyone he or his department opts to deem a “threat”. Do you see where this is going now?

Other government ministers can see exactly where he’s going with it and have already guessed what he is really up to (because of that Home Security Bill he has tried to get passed) and to date have refused to support it. With luck they won’t be cajoled into voting with this one, which will grant the green light for this guy to get what he really wants; a technological back door into the lives of any one of us. Not because he needs to, but simply because he wants to be able to and once the technology is there…

Well, there will be no going back, and that’s a worry.

 

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The Pill-testing Debate

Pill testing. It’s been hogging the media here in Australia for a while now, but at the risk of getting the pro-test groups all bent out of shape, I find myself leaning towards the “No” side because I am still of the belief that people need to be responsible for their own actions, up to and including taking something that they know has the potential to harm or kill them. Like, how hard can that be?

I think the bells began ringing when 15-year-old Anna Woods collapsed and died after taking an Ecstasy pill in 1995. While Anna’s death was tragic, it did sound a warning that perhaps Ecstasy was not the harmless party drug that people had originally thought it was and the media storm that followed revealed the drug could contain all manner of toxic ingredients that could cause nasty side effects, permanent injury and in other cases, death.

Right. That should have been sufficient to cull the number of users, yes? Well, no, it wasn’t. Ecstasy pills and the like have made greater inroads into the Australian drug culture, become synonymous with music and dance festivals and despite the warnings all over the media, the user rate has grown, resulting in more people suffering permanent damage, with the death rate from pill use increasing alarmingly. And this is the bit I don’t get; why would you deliberately ingest something that has your highly possible demise written all over it? It is still a tragedy when people do and die as a result, but no one can claim today that they bought the pills in ignorance. We all know they are toxic. We all know they are very bad news. So why would anyone be stupid enough to take the risk?

Well firstly, there’s the silly supposition of “It won’t happen to me.” Sorry, but it so will. “Everyone else is taking them!” Really? So that’s a good reason? Every user that has either dropped dead or been left permanently damaged from taking these pills no doubt thought exactly the same thing, assuming they gave it any thought at all and once you have taken one bad pill, that’s it. For you, anyway.

And now we have the blame game. Responsibility and consequences, appear to have become dirty words unless they can be attributed to someone or something else. In the case of the dangerous pills being hawked around the festival circuit, it’s “the government’s fault” which takes personal responsibility right out of the equation. Except it doesn’t. Right now, in NSW, the pro-pill testing groups are blaming the government and in particular, the NSW Premier, for the death of every fool who plays Russian Roulette with a pill, and loses, because she has said no to pill testing booths at festivals and the like. Well, sorry to rain on their parade and all, but the blame doesn’t lay with either. It is not up to the government to hold your hand. The blame lays squarely with the user who, despite all the health warnings about these pills, still opts to buy them and use them. If they die as a result, the fault is theirs and theirs alone. I understand that this won’t go down well with the pro-pill testing lot, but I don’t care. It’s time someone spoke up and dumped the facts on them. Festival organisers can’t be held responsible either. They already have a police presence at their events, and sniffer dogs. What else would you have them do? The government has made all the information about the dangers of these pills readily available. What else should they be expected to do?

If you are old enough to attend a festival, you are old enough to take responsibility for your own health and safety, and that’s the bottom line. If you opt not to buy/use the pills, I congratulate you for using some common sense regarding your life but should you decide to take them, then it’s unlikely you are reading this because you died. If you died, it’s on you, hon, no one else.

Seriously, you need to wake up!

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The Naked Truth!

With all the drama that has afflicted many of those who have done so, one would think the message may have got out there by now but apparently not. I’m talking about posting pics of yourself in the altogether online and believing no harm will come to you as a result.

Trust me, it can find you all right and if it does, it could get really nasty and turn your life upside down.

Like the “sextortion” racket currently targeting people, a high percentage of whom are young men, via dating apps and social networking sites. What happens is this; people make a “connection” with another person and it appears all very nice. Before long, however, the person at the other end suggests a move to a private chat room where they can continue their conversation. Once there, they will quickly manage to bring the chat around to requesting some naked images, either pics or videos. Now, one would think that this request should present as a Big Red Flag, warning of the strong possibility that something’s not quite right, but the number of people missing the flag completely is staggering, and the numbers are growing.

So what is it about a request from a complete stranger, asking for intimate images, that’s failing to alert people? Seriously, there is only one kind of person who does this, and you’ve just met one of them!

In the case of sextortion, once those images have been uploaded and captured at the other end, the sender will almost immediately begin to receive threats demanding either money, more images or both, with a warning that failure to comply will result in your naked pics being uploaded to the Internet. And it’s unlikely to stop should you pay up. As with any form of blackmail, it will go on and on.

This is the ugly reality of sending naked pics of yourself to anyone, or in allowing someone to take intimate pics or video footage of you. Regardless of who has snapped them or has possession of them, there are no guarantees that you images won’t end up being shared publicly via the Internet. It’s what happens. I guess the best filter here is to ask yourself if you would be okay with your family, your friends, your boss or you workmates, plus thousands of complete strangers seeing them. If the answer is “not on your life!” then don’t get your gear off in front of a lens. Just don’t do it.

Sextortion is one of the nastier ones doing the rounds at the moment and it is also a crime. If you have been caught by a sextorion racket, you need to report it to the authorities. But if not, then heed this as a warning. Do not give anyone access to naked images of yourself. Anyone at all, because you have no guarantee of privacy and no comeback if you willingly pose and it gets out there. Sextortion is possibly as bad as it can get.

You do not want to go there.

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Green, or Greed?

Environmental issues have been a hot topic for decades, and on the whole, they have centred around issues like air, water and land pollution with consecutive governments taking steps to prevent it. This has been a good thing.  Ditto the phase-out of plastic bags in supermarkets and the like, and Council depots providing recycling points at rubbish tips and encouraging people to use them, which is also a good thing. No one really has an excuse not to separate and recycle their rubbish anymore.

If it all goes toward preserving the planet, it’s a good thing. Trashing the place until it is no longer habitable is definitely not. People are a lot more aware now, which is another good thing. Many good things here. Which is good, yes? Basically, yes.

The problem with good things, however, is the potential for them to be exploited (very bad thing!) and the “environment” word pushes a lot of emotional buttons with a lot of people, which leaves it wide open to exploitation. It can be a money train if you manage to milk it the right way. A few years back, one of the electricity supply companies in Australia began promoting “green” power; electricity from sources such as wind turbines and solar power plants. The television ads were very people-friendly, the smiling woman in the ad all sacharine and vaccuous (I just wanted to swat her) in her pitch to encourage people to switch to electricity from “green” sources, as a positive step towards reducing one’s “carbon footprint” (if I hear that one more time I’m going to spit!) etc, etc, etc. Well, yes, it would be a little more expensive than the electricity supplied via the coal fired power stations, but what’s a little extra cost when it comes to “saving the planet”? Firstly, it was not a “little” extra cost to the consumer (it was designed to make a nice profit for the power company after all) it was a rip-off. At the time of airing, there were  insufficient alternative energy plants to guarantee the power people would be paying more for would be “green” because the availability of alternative power was only so-so during off-peak periods, and during peak periods would more than likely be supplied via a coal fired power station, as the alternative sources could not meet demand. And there was no way to check either way what they were using. People signed up for it though, not realising they were just paying more for the same thing they’d been using all along. There’s no absolute guarantee of it’s supply even now, unless you are using the power generated via the solar panels on your own roof.

This was a very deliberate exploitation. The power company knew the supply of “green” power was sketchy but they promoted it anyway.

But why stop at a small deception designed to bring in some extra cash if you can pull off something a lot bigger, with the potential to make billions? If greed is your god then you would have already cottoned on to that potential and if you are smart enough, you will have mapped out a plan to fool the masses while making yourself very, very wealthy. If you can pull it off.

You may need a few powerful allies with credible backgrounds to assist with the launch, but you’ll keep the number within reason as you don’t want to have to split the potentially massive profits too widely. There will be kickbacks, of course, which will be nice little earners for those assisting you in your ruse and the payouts will be generous enough to keep them on-side, but no matter, because the money will come rolling in. If you can pull it off…

Well, someone did cotton on, and while they haven’t quite managed to pull it off to their satisfaction just yet, they have certainly managed to lay the groundwork. They just need to convince us all now that there is a genuine threat to the planet. That’s proving to be a little easier said than done, because some of us are not buying into it, but they are not letting it go because of the potential it has to generate more wealth than they can poke a stick at. This one’s a global exploitation and it’s a biggie.

Do you know where I’m going with this?

 

 

 

 

 

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The Barbie Myth

Once upon a time there was a beautiful teenage doll called Barbie. She was popular, she had style and lots of wonderful clothes and accessories. Over time she could pretty much do anything, even suntan! My older sister had a Barbie and I would have killed for one. In fact, I believe I “killed” my Cindy doll in the hope she would be replaced, come the next birthday or Christmas, with a Barbie. But …(sigh)…didn’t happen.

Barbie became an icon, the most popular doll on the market, and little girls the world over spent many wonderful years playing with their Barbie dolls. When I could manage to get a hold of her, I really enjoyed playing with my sister’s! As dolls went, she was a standout.

Now all of this should have a happy ending, right? Well no, unfortunately Barbie became the target of a minority of experts (and I use the term very loosely) who have vilified the Barbie doll, claiming she is a very bad influence on little girls and the result has been the destruction of this glamorous icon to pacify them. It’s an outrage really, because Barbie was in a class of her own, there was no comparison and consecutive teenage dolls never really came up to scratch. They just lacked that It factor.

The negative press began back in the 90s when the first of the minority “experts” decided Barbie’s glamour-puss looks were detrimental to every little girls’ personal development; leading them to such nasties as bulimia, anorexia and body issues in general as they strived to look like their Barbie dolls and would then clock up hours on the analyst’s couch when they didn’t! Really? The generations of little girls who played with Barbie, grew up and didn’t fall into these categories counted for nothing? Apparently not, and that’s an awful lot to dump on a doll, I think. Fortunately no one was really listening back then and Barbie continued to flourish. And then, in 2017, Mattel caved to the minority and Barbie has been remodelled to better represent “real” women. Ken’s had a makeover too, I think. But why???

A documentary I watched not too long ago, which focused on the perceived influence of the Barbie doll, had the narrator trying very hard to get a handful of little girls to express what she wanted to hear. When it didn’t happen she eventually asked outright if they wanted to look just like Barbie when they grew up?  Th little girls looked at her askance and then one piped up with “But she’s a doll!” and that summed the whole debate up for me. The generations of healthy women who played with Barbie as children also support my belief that the “experts” need to just shut up and go away!

Anyway, Barbie now comes in all shapes and sizes so you would think her detractors would be happy, wouldn’t you? They’re not though, if the antics of the woman checking a series of graphs and making comparisons in ominous tones is anything to go by. According to her, even podgy Barbie is “in fact” below the realistic standard weight ratio, whatever that is. You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s a doll! Personally, I think the new “real shape/weight/look” Barbies are hideous!

The whole concept of the doll has been lost and it’s tragic.

But seriously… It’s A Doll!

 

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When On-Trend is Completely Off!

 

Womanspreading, or the “power stance” as it is also known, is apparently a thing now. Don’t know what that is? Lucky you! But on the off-chance that you do want to know, Womanspreading is the female response to Manspreading, where women sit with their legs spread, like men do when seated. It is supposedly designed to empower women. Right.

Naturally it has become a celebrity thingy, with a number of celebrity females opting to spread, shoot and then post their crotch-in-your-face image on social media, and why am I not surprised? Because some of the stupidest trends come out of the celebrity circuit and this one would have to be right up there I think.

But let’s look at why men sit with their legs apart. Mainly it’s a matter of comfort. Men are not physically designed to sit with their legs crossed or close together. It’s just not comfortable. In other cases, the male leg spread is a subconscious display, especially amongst alpha types, who will sit back with arms apart and legs spread in a display of male dominance in a male group and is also not an uncommon response in the presence of a female the alpha may find attractive. The key word here though, is subconscious. It’s a subliminal message of sorts.

In relation to women though, the leg spread is entirely unnecessary but fans of this idiocy claim it is designed to empower women. Really? And how exactly does it do that? You see, women sitting with their legs spread also send a subliminal message, but probably not the one the current slaves to this trend have in mind. As opposed to saying “Hi! I am an Empowered Woman!” to every male within eyeshot, the message going out can easily be misconstrued.  Like it or no, that’s the message many men will get from a display of Womanspreading. It’s not a good look and let’s face it, it has connotations. There are so many better ways for women to put themselves out there, to showcase themselves and to empower themselves.

Personally speaking, I don’t think the women trending this have really thought it through. Like, they are not only adopting this pose, they are posting images of themselves doing it on social media and we all know what happens with controversial images of ourselves posted online, don’t we? Why, they come back to bite us, often sooner rather than later, because they will end up shared all over the place. Then, try as you might to find someone else to blame, you will end up having to wear it all on your own. Hard to present as a victim when you have done it all by yourself.

I’m going to assume here that not too many non-celebrity women will follow this trend because, as I said, it has connotations, but there are enough sheep out there to have it do the rounds for a little while. I’m guessing though that it may turn out to be one of those five minute wonders, like the short skirt with no knickers trend, which turned out to be just a flash in the pan. At least Womanspreading requires one to wear clothes. Well, for the moment anyway.

Still a cheap shot though

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The Citizenship Conversation

It hasn’t been going very well for our Aussie politicians, has it? That’s because of the big question mark hovering over the “Aussie” bit as many of them are apparently discovering they may not be as Australian as they first thought! Yes, I know, not being aware of one’s citizenship status seems like a bit of a stretch to me too but those of them caught up in the mess are looking a tad shell-shocked, which leads me to believe that it’s entirely possible that a foreign or dual citizenship issue hadn’t occurred to them when they entered the Australian political arena.

If born here, and one’s birth registered here, it is entirely likely that one would assume that one was Australian, right? Regardless of where one’s parents and/or grandparents came from, yes? Well that’s what I would think too but it is not unheard of for parents to also register their child as a citizen of the country of their own birth as well, thus granting them dual citizenship or even full citizenship in some cases, with the country of their parents’ birth. That was the case with a couple I knew many years ago; Mum was Australian, Dad American but they were living in Australia when Daughter Number Two was born. They had her registered as an American citizen. Oh well, seems she didn’t enter politics so no problem.

It’s also possible that parents, who have done the dual or foreign citizenship thingy with their offspring, may not have told them about it, leaving the child/children to discover it for themselves somewhere down the track, like when they decide to enter politics. One has to be an Australian citizen to enter politics in Australia,  but if all the Australian politicians caught up in this mess are to be believed, none of them had the foggiest idea. Seems the citizenship conversation was one they never had with their parents. But why would they  even think to ask? As in “Hey Mum, am I an Aussie citizen?”

“Well, funny you should ask…because you’re actually not. You see, if you’d been born a girl, we would have just named you after Great Grandma Zanillya, which would have been easier I suppose, but when you turned out to be a boy we decided to have you made a citizen of that tiny Eastern European country, which we’ve never been able to pronounce, that she came from instead. It was a respectful acknowledgement thing, you know? And she was so excited. At least we think she was…she didn’t speak any English so it was a bit hard to tell.”

“You had me made a citizen of a country you can’t even pronounce??!”

“I can spell it though, hang on while I write it down for you.”

Nope, it’s highly unlikely that someone who was born and bred in one country would think to question whether they were possibly a citizen of another. It’s just not something that would normally come to mind.

Meanwhile in Australia, political careers are plummeting as more and more of those in office are being found to be there “illegally” because despite their being born here, they have some vague connection to a foreign country via parents having been born overseas and/or being eligible for dual citizenship as a result. At last one of them apparently gained foreign citizenship via his mother so he’s Italian or something now, and he didn’t even know it! Well that’s what he claims anyway.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? I’m fairly certain I’m an Australian citizen but I may not be, despite the fact that I was born here, as were my parents and grandparents.

Seems that doesn’t mean a thing anymore…

 

 

 

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Pre-schooler Prepping??!

If you have opted to become a tutor specialising in preparing pre-schoolers for Kindergarten, you are probably going to make a lot of money via the increase in parents paying to have their four-year-olds tutored in literacy and numeracy in an effort to give them the upper hand upon starting school.  All because of an assessment which is not a test.

Believe it or not, children actually learn a lot from play, which is why it is so important and at three and four years of age, children shouldn’t be constrained by formal tutoring. They probably don’t even want to be, because timeslots of formal learning really cut into play time and if given the chance to choose between the two, they will opt for play every time. Nevertheless, parents are pushing ahead with “lessons” for their littlies to get them “academically prepared” for school, hence the rise in enrolments at tutoring colleges for programs aimed at prepping pre-schoolers…for Kindergarten! Apparently a lot of it has to do with a compulsory (in all state schools and some private schools) assessment before they enter Kindergarten, which is part of the Best Start program designed to identify each child’s literacy and numeracy skills. Left to their own devices, most pre-kindies would score around the same here I think, the exceptions being the exceptionally bright, but the playing field will no longer be level now, let alone accurate, because those not shoved into tutoring naturally won’t score quite as well as the child tutored to within an inch of its life, which will probably cause them to be assessed unfairly. A spokesperson for the NSW Department of Education said however that the Best Start program was not a test and that children did not need tutoring to prepare for it and that tutoring makes it a lot more difficult for teachers to get an accurate snapshot of a child’s genuine numeracy and literacy skills.

But how much pressure should we put on pre-schoolers anyway? We are talking little kids here who still place more value on play than structured learning, something that will begin proper when they enter school and will continue for the next 10 to 12 years where they will learn to read, write, do maths, history, geography and the sciences. Years of study and cramming and exams ahead of them and if they go on to university you can add around another two to four years of that! And it will all begin in Kindergarten!

So why not just let them have those first four years to enjoy being little kids spending their days in play?

Sure, we would all like to see our children do well academically and helping them along at their own pace is a fine idea, but there is a big difference between assisting them at their own pace and compelled learning being imposed way too early; show me a four-year-old who has been forced into academic tutoring and I’ll show you a little soul who doesn’t know the difference between a mathematical problem and a hopscotch grid. Okay, maybe that’s a tad extreme but the point I’m making is that at pre-school age, they will learn far more from play than from structured tutoring. They will enjoy it more because the pressure won’t be there. Also, tutoring can send the wrong message to those kiddies who haven’t been, as in maybe they are not smart enough, and in a Kindy classroom of tutored children, those who did not take part in pre-school tutoring programs may be made to feel less than their peers. This is really unfair.

But there are always going to be parents pushing to get the advantage no matter how negatively it may impact on their children which makes me wonder who they are really doing it for?

Themselves, I think…

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Safer Schools now, we hope!

Remember when troublesome kids in a classroom were given a warning or two, and then sent outside when the warnings were ignored? Being sent outside was a biggie because it often meant a trip to the Principal’s office when the class was over and depending on how bad the behaviour was, a possible letter sent home or even worse, a telephone call made on the spot. Generally, the child’s parents would side with the school and deal with the little miscreant when they got home. It worked.

Everything changed, however, once children were handed more rights than they knew what to do with and every school got a counsellor to ensure that every child knew what those rights were. Problem children were no longer punished for bad behaviour because they had a talk with the counsellor instead who had a tendency to exonerate them from blame and the situation escalated when the parental trend to not control their child’s behaviour became the norm. Schools could suspend a student but expulsion became more difficult as various agencies stepped in support the child, leaving schools powerless to act. At home, as the child aged and the bad behaviour was no longer cute, parents who’d opted out of any type of discipline could fall back on such labels as Attention Deficient Disorder and Attention Deficient Hyperactive Disorder to get them off the hook. Lazy parents loved the ADD and ADHD labels because they could blame the “disorder”, not themselves and pop the little monster on behaviour surpassing drugs. Problem solved.

Not quite.  Not every problem kiddy is medicated. A lot of them have parents who flatly refuse to accept their child is at fault. It’s the school’s fault, teacher’s fault, another child’s fault and in some cases, even the victims of their child’s bullying or violence is at fault! I’m not sure how they can arrive at that one, but they do. Then the whole thing goes beyond them and they “need help” and want “the government” to fix it.

Well possibly that may be on the cards now, with new laws being introduced into state parliament which will force students who pose a significant risk to others to enrol in distance education were they will be monitored and study online from home while the danger they pose to teachers and other students is assessed. This is a very good thing, even if it is at least a decade or so late. It means that students who commit crimes outside of school hours, especially when that behaviour can cause issues in the school as well, can be stopped from returning to school. Under the proposed Education Amendment (School Safety) Bill 2017, school principals will regain control and it will bring the 30-year-old Education Act up to date with the kind of threats posed by radicalised students and those who pose a genuine threat via anti-social or violent behaviour.

And so it should! And it will put the onus back onto parents to curb their children’s bad behaviour; something many of them haven’t been doing for a couple of generations now, leaving it up to others to do the “parenting” because they didn’t want the inconvenience of having to do it themselves, “inconvenience” being the key word here. But these new laws should change that (so long as they really are put into practice and child agencies/counsellors butt out and let it happen) because the thing with lazy parents is this; they tend to ignore their child’s behavioural issues, no matter how bad, when it doesn’t directly impact on them. Banning the little monsters from the classroom though, and forcing them to enrol in distance education means they will be at home which puts them back under parental control and when suddenly lumbered with their problem offspring, they will no doubt act. A school principal once said to me “The best way to get some parents to actually do something about their kids’ bad behaviour is to make it inconvenient for them. Once they can’t unload the problem onto someone else, they soon step up to the mark.” Something they should have been doing from day one.

Anyway, on paper it looks good and if the bleeding hearts are kept out of it, schools should be able to return to being safe places again and the flow-on will apparently see teachers having more powers to deal with those uncooperative, troublemakers and classrooms should go back to being the more peaceful learning spaces they used to be. The physically and/or violent schoolyard/social media bullies could be in for a shock too from the flow-on effect because I think the laws apply to them as well. Either way, many of the social/behavioural problems that have been allowed to infiltrate schools for too long will now be addressed.

See? The government is fixing it, after all!

 

 

 

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The Gift of the Jab

Misinformation is a problem at the best of times, and unfortunately, the Internet is full of it. People with no solid background in science, medicine, or healthcare are some of the worst offenders when it comes to misinformation because they often manage to package themselves as “qualified” or “professional” when they actually aren’t either and this is a real problem because they inevitably attract followers via those looking for answers when things go wrong.

They are kind of like cult leaders, I think,  with an over generous dollop of pot-stirrer (to attract controversy) thrown in for good measure and are very good at roping in the type of people who will readily believe whatever they read or hear and in the case of parents looking for something to blame when their child is not born perfectly healthy…well they’re just fodder for these self-styled “professionals”

Top of the list right now are the anti-vaccers. On the off chance you don’t know who they are, anti-vaccers are are loudly vocal group advocating that parents forgo vaccinations in the interests of their children’s health. They have proclaimed that vaccinations are full of poisonous toxins and are to blame for such conditions as asthma, schizophrenia, autism and eczema and that’s just for starters. No doubt there are other health issues out there just waiting to be labelled as vaccine-induced too but those I have mentioned above are the most common baddies at the moment. The anti-vaccine advocates would have you believe that it is actually good for children to contract nasty preventable diseases because, basically, they are “non-threatening” illnesses and once the child recovers they will have a natural immunity. Ri-ight, except that “recovers” is the debatable word here.

Let’s do a whip-around of those “non-threatening” diseases, shall we? We’ll start with Measles, Mumps and Chickenpox. Yes, children have caught these and most of them recovered, but measles and chickenpox can leave pockmark scars that don’t go away. Mumps can leave boys sterile. Adults who are unfortunate enough to contract these diseases are a lot sicker than if they had had the diseases as children. Adult males who contract mumps are more highly likely to end up sterile.

Next on the list is Diphtheria. This highly contagious bacterial disease attacks and causes inflammation of the mucus membranes. It also causes the formation of false membranes in the throat, which seriously hinders breathing and swallowing, as well as potentially fatal heart and nerve damage via the bacterial toxins in the bloodstream. Tetanus is another bacterial nasty which causes severe and painful spasms and rigidity of the voluntary muscles and locks the jaw. There is no cure. Tuberculosis (TB, Consumption) is a bacterial infection that especially infects the lungs. Symptoms are fever, coughing fits that get more severe as the disease progresses and death is usually caused by eventual haemorrhage. The most common form, Pulmonary Tuberculosis, has caused millions of deaths. And let’s not forget Poliomyelitis (Polio). This infectious viral disease attacks the central nervous system, causing paralysis. Those making a recovery are left crippled. Many ended up in an iron lung, a big metal device which provided prolonged artificial respiration. Before vaccination, hospitals had a lot of these.  And then there’s Whooping Cough, a highly contagious bacterial disease characterised by compulsive coughing. Also know as Pertussis, it is usually fatal in babies and toddlers. Seriously, who would do nothing to prevent their child catching one of these when the means to prevention is readily available???

The advent of vaccination means these diseases have, thankfully, all but disappeared in developed countries. The bacteria that causes them is still present in our world but the controlled dose of lab-grown versions of them means we can be safely “infected” but not catch the disease, let alone die from it! But vaccination is most effective when everyone gets it and that’s where those refusing to vaccinate their children are causing so much damage. A vaccinated child coming into close proximity with an unvaccinated one who is sick can still contract the disease and can then pass it on to others, like babies not yet old enough to have begun the vaccination program, those with other health issues and the aged and it is often fatal for them.

In an extreme effort to promote non-vaccination, anti-vaccers have propagated a rabid campaign of misinformation which has caused a lot of confusion for some parents who naturally want to do the best by their children. This is very unfair. Interestingly, many of the anti-vaccination supporters soon lost their fervour when the Australian Government imposed welfare cuts and the non-payment of other government assistance to those refusing to vaccinate their children. Funny that! But with the reintroduction of many of these nasty but preventable diseases, due to a stubborn and misguided group of individuals opting out of vaccinating, some hefty action needed to be taken  and withholding the government handouts these people enjoy was probably one of the most effective actions it could have taken.

Because money talks.