Don't you just know when a clown arrives in the circus ring? Welcome George Osborne!
Osborne is the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer of the UK: a member of the Conservative Shadow Cabinet.
Last weekend this clown went to Uganda and spent the weekend in a village outside Kampala. He came back and went straight from the airport to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme studio to be interviewed by an unsuspecting John Humphrys. I can't think why he bothered.
He blustered into the studio and said that if he became Chancellor after the next election he would spend £500 miilion of our money eradicating Malaria. Yes, Malaria is a sub Saharan Africa curse and yes it needs to be eradicated.
This clown's logic was to provide nets for everyone to sleep under and to provide medicines to cure anyone who catches the dread disease. His further logic was that since everyone would then be well all of the time, productivity would rise and infant mortality would fall. Laudable, Coco, laudable.
What this clown failed to do was to follow this logic:
Where does Malaria come from? Oh, from a certain kind of female Mosquito (the Anopheles) How are the Mosquito allowed to flourish as they do? Oh, it's because of the vast amounts of still and stagnant water that lies all over Africa in the rainy season where the insects breed without let or hindrance So if you control the breeding grounds you control the disease? Yes
If you control the mosquito, you control the disease and then you don't need to cure anyone. Does that mean by controlling the insect and the disease you control things for ever; but if you buy nets and medicines to cure people you need to keep doing that for ever because the Mosquito will continue to thrive, nets will rip, tablets need to be replaced once consumed? Yes, yes, yes ...
By the way, Coco, there is as yet no cure for Malaria other than prevention. This is well known by anyone who has spent more than a weekend in an African village. Moreover, these insects don't just bite at night so nets might help a bit but not all of the time.
Another question sprang to my mind: why did the Shadow Chancellor take this jolly, sorry fact finding trip? After all, shouldn't it at least have been the Shadow Foreign Secretary? Ah, I see, the Shadow Foreign Secretary is the Clown in Chief, William "Billy the Beer" Hague. Good point: no point sending him as he would start by trying to forge a political alliance between warring factions in South America or Europe or somewhere before starting on the African Malaria problem. That alliance would be scheduled to come into effect in, say, 2012 or so ... forget Coco in Chief then. So that should have left the Shadow International Development: erm, who's that? Who knows? Oh!
More misery scheduled for Africa then.
Finally, Coco, take a look at a bit of African history and you will see that THEY USED TO control the Malaria by controlling the Mosquito by controlling the lying water.
These stupid people get on my nerves but there will be countless jollies as these clowns set up yet more circus rings in a trusting and unsuspecting Africa.
DW
1 comment:
After having written that post about Malaria I let it lie for a while and then couldn't resist writing to George Osborne directly. This is what I wrote:
"I heard with growing dismay your analysis and proposal for action on Malaria following your weekend trip to Uganda.
My dismay will be shared by many people who understand this issue and will be shared in the future by those poor Africans who will continue to suffer from Malaria if your proposals are ever put in place instead of a more rational and less emotive response to the problem.
Please go to my Blog here for some rather more sagely advice than that shared by you yesterday: http://duncanwil.blogspot.com/
Duncan"
Let's see if he replies in any way ... himself that is, not one of his minions. I wrote to David Cameron once and got a vacuous response from a hanger on that reflected nothing of what I wrote in my letter!
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