Well it was funny when I was eleven which is when AIDS really hit Britain or at least when the advertising started.
Efforts to stop the spread of HIV/Aids in the UK are “woefully inadequate” and a new awareness campaign is needed, a House of Lords committee has said.
Yes, I saw Lord Fowler on the TV. Apparently we spend “next to nothing” on AIDS prevention. This almost stuns me. The government spends a fortune on it’s war with salt, fatty foods, beer, ciggy-wigs but not AIDS - like Ginster’s pasty might is more lethal than a roll in the hay with “positive Mike” (possibly, I have had Ginster’s pasty - it was emotional - I don’t believe in God but after that I do believe in near death experiences. I guess they expect Sir Elton to do the heavy lifting on that score. Frankly I reckon the tubby crooner does a better job but that is another issue.
(I am not by the way making a case for MOR popular songsmiths to take government jobs in general. But Sir Elton at least seems to have his head screwed on the right way. This cannot be said about much the rest of ‘em. Phil Collins - wanker extrordinaire - once divorced his missus by fax - how ’80s is that! Sir Paul for the FCO! Seeing as he was taken in by a gold-digging Geordie unidexter I can’t see that working out in a trade deal with the Chinese - they’d eat the Scouser for breakfast and stack the bones in the shower. And then there’s Sting at any position. God help us!)
It says better testing must become a priority and suggests relaxing the laws on home-testing kits.
I often find government to resemble OCD. I mean the last lot made it illegal to sell squirrels (this means I’m using the black market and financing Snakehead gangs and Yardies but I’m down to ten a day) and illegal to detonate a nuclear device “except as an act of war”. It is the same demented mentality that even conceives of laws about HIV testing. I mean some things obviously ought to be against the law: murder, rape, putting a camera in front of Jonathan Ross. No, not the last one! That is so obviously vile it shouldn’t need to be illegal in a civilized society. If I were a TV exec I’d be more inclined to show “Adolf Eichmann Does Tap” or even “Come Dine With Me”. The last one is a close call, mind.
But HIV-testing is a matter of life and death so it must be regulated! So is a pregnancy test and my local pharmacy will sell me a dozen of those. Why the difference? [Don't give 'em ideas Nick!]. I mean the pharmacist would raise a quizzical eyebrow but I’d just say, “Been one of those weeks…” and flash a naughty grin. Either that or I’d say I’d been taken on as a runner for a show on C5.
The Department of Health said with no cure, prevention and safe sex were key.
Which is pretty much what they said 25 years ago. Now I dunno if it needs re-iterating*. What I do know is the Department of Stealth and Social Insecurity (as was) not long since ran a “safe-sex campaign” (buried in the same TV graveyard-slots Durex use off their own dime!) mentioning all sorts of dread maladies got via cock and cunny and the tradesmen’s but not AIDS. What I don’t know is whether “awareness” needs raising. I really have no idea (not going down on the kids) but it does seem odd that the government can spend millions on chlamydia but not on AIDS.
Lord Fowler says…
Acquiring HIV is not remotely consequence-free.
Touché! Does anyone think it is? I mean anyone who thinks? Lots of the government muntering on this seems predicated upon the same ideas they think we have. AIDS is now a manageable condition. That doesn’t mean it won’t kill you. Everyone knows that. Everyone knows that for a very simple reason because it’s true. AIDS is pretty much the only person-to-person transmissible disease that is both (fairly) common and (potentially) fatal in the developed world. Apart from hospital infections - obviously.
The health tyrants do seem to have let this ball slip from their grasp somewhat. Going, as they have done, for chips and a Diet Coke and such as the route of all weevil. But really!
I dunno. What I do know is getting AIDS is a really, really bad idea. This arguably is why Sir Elton has done more good than the government - he is focused because he lived a pretty cavalier lifestyle in the ’70s and didn’t get AIDS. I saw him interviewed and what drives his charity suff here is how lucky he feels. By rights he should be in the same choir eternal as Freddie Mercury and he knows it - lucked-out there Elt! It is not like (in the Geordie) “gettin’ a durse and gannin’ to the special clinic”. It is not, to put it bluntly (and the instruments of the NHS “special clinics” are used very bluntly***) a laughing matter. One is a topic for - a few pints in - public house ribaldry and the other just isn’t. Are there any buggers (or those who take the lady highway - I ought to be shot) who don’t know about AIDS? Really. I mean the whole libertarian thing is we own ourselves. Otherwise it is nothing and we are mere cogs in a grand machine. Well, not that grand, obviously.
Christ almighty, do our Lords and Masters not trust us to go out of our way not to contract fatal diseases?
It’s part of my plans for he weekend. I dunno about the cabinet - look at them - the best argument ever put forward for complete sexual abstinence. Theresa May but I won’t. NB. There is also Teresa May who is not a secretary of state (well maybe for party-ee!). Well, she might be in a rational universe. I honestly found that purely by chance. I was just trying to look-up the leading Tory politician as the actress said to the bishop. Really!
Reminds me! I recently didn’t buy a book. It was in Corbridge, Northumberland and it was the memoirs of Norman Lamont. It was very cheap. Not cheap enough. My cat fetches in things of more literary merit.
They don’t trust us. How do you feel about people who don’t trust you? Would you have sex with someone you knew didn’t trust you? Because you know if you don’t trust them…
So why trust on he subject of sexually transmitted infections not your husband, wife, lover, paramour, whatever but the sort of people you would never bunk-up with in poincare time?
What next? Gordon Brown on the G-spot? You know that forced grin he has? The one by numbers? You know like Mandelson has stuck a traffic-cone up his bracket and he’s quantitatively easing whether he likes it or not. I have gone too far now. I’m gonna buy a hair-shirt, learn apiculture and start droning in Latin.
Coda: AIDS is manageable now. This is not good but it beats the hell out of dying! Most things do. The rest are on Jeremy Kyle show. This is due to combined therapy - a heady cocktail of drugs - not ideal but when you contemplate the alternative… The key scientist who developed this is no longer with us. He was on Pan Am 103.
*Possibly. At my secondary school, “AIDS”, opined a member of Set 7 (of 7**), “Is an arse disease that botters get”. Which perhaps reinforces the point that folks either know already or any amount of percussive education with a pit-prop will do no good. Having taught math to folk who didn’t want to know it I know. It was at times like carving granite with a banana. What really fecked me off was they weren’t thick. What kept me coming back for more was 18 quid an hour and that was twelve years ago. Teaching - casting false pearls before real swine.
**My brother’s year it was up to set 9! Set 9 of 9. What a thing to label someone at age 11! There are many excellent things my country learned from India. A caste system shouldn’t have been one of them.
***Second-hand experience.
I really have no idea (not going down on the kids) but it does seem odd that the government can spend millions on chlamydia but not on AIDS.
I’ll defend them on that. Anyone (any straight person, at least) who is sexually active enough to contract AIDS will almost certainly contract chlamydia. Whereas AIDS is relatively difficult to catch through straight sex, chlamydia can and will be caught within a split second of uncovered entry. The reasoning goes that if anyone shags enough people who might have AIDS, they will catch chlamydia long before. In fact, I once spoke to a doctor about the prevalence of STDs in Dubai as a result of the hooker scene, and he told me they screen for chlamydia first: if you don’t have that, there is a negligible chance you’ll have anything else. On the flip side, prostitutes suffering from AIDS almost always have a whole raft of other diseases as well. I read somewhere a few years back that the British gov’t was working to get the chlamydia rate down because if successful it would bring down the rate of all other STDs too. So if they have focussed on chlamydia, then they haven’t necessarily been ignoring AIDS.
Do we have a problem with this? I am an oldie in a stable, monogamous relationship so it doesn’t really effect me. I wasn’t that promiscuous when I was single, I only slept with women once I had established a fairly stable relationship and there weren’t that many of them. I get the impression that a fair proportion of today’s teens and twenty-somethings will screw anything that moves, as you can imagine I am so out of touch that I have no idea whether this is true or not. If it is true, I would expect that we would already have an epidemic on our hands similar to the one in Africa, I know that we have condoms but we also have the pill. I am just wondering why the HOL has suddenly sat up and noticed, has a new report just come out?
Stonyground, you have to take into account that contrary to the assumptions we make about the behaviour of others, promiscuity is rather overstated, simply because only a minority of “alphas” get the opportunity to indulge in it. Hence the lack of spread of AIDS in the straight community; on the gay scene it is far easier for even relatively unattractive males to be arbitrarily promiscuous. Heck, back when I was involved with a gay bar, and used to socialise a lot, I only had to sit at the bar with a pint to get picked up. The contrast with the heterosexual mating rituals was rather stark and depressing. I’m reminded of a rather depressed posting I saw on a message board once in a discussion about sex, which went something like “my impression is, a few men are getting lots, most men aren’t getting much, and some don’t get any at all”. The poster was in the latter category, I think.
I’m not a big fan of “public health” and I don’t think all this conscisousness raising achieves much. My guess is that the biggest block to the spread of ADIS in the western liberal democracies is the very high degree of female choosiness which restricts the capacity for rampant male promiscuity to a few lucky alpha males. Basically, today’s teens and twenty-something males will certainly screw anything that moves, as has always been the case. But as has also always been the case, most don’t get the chance.
Thanks Tim and Ian, both posts very informative. I should have remembered from my younger days that all males would claim to be having a lot more sex than they actually were.
Ian,
You were “involved” with a gay bar? I’m boggling. “Involved” with a gay bartender I could get
I really don’t know about the promiscuity thing though it’s got to be non-linear as far as disease spread goes. In the ’70s the CIA worked out that the risk of a secret going viral (so to speak - think where that phrase comes from) is roughly equal to the square of the people who know it.
I’m not sure about the alpha male theory. The most promiscuous fuckers of my acquaintance were hardly gamma males. They just had no standards whatsoever. I have only ever known one alpha male-type who really put it about. Most use their attractiveness to secure an alpha female and then ram that fact down your throat at every opportunity.
So we come back to what makes Africa different. Now don’t get me wrong. Lots of folks in Europe and the US have got AIDS but it is by no stretch at the rate it is in Africa. Is Ian right? Maybe. But there are a couple of other issues. Africa is seeing urbanization like we had 150-200 years ago. This year for the first time in human history I can honestly state most folks are urban. That has to have an effect. There is also the simple fact that it appears black Africans are genetically more susceptible to HIV than white Europeans (this is apparently related to the bubonic plague). There are also probs different social factors. Add all these together and combine with non-linearity and you got an epidemic.
One of the great tragedies of our time is Botswana. Botswana is a well-run country. By African standards it’s an exemplar but it’s 1/3 HIV+. Arguably this could be because it’s well-run and otherwise doing the right thing - urbanising and all. I’ve always fancied going to Botswana - since I met Len at university. I’m fairly sure he didn’t have AIDS but he was so cold. In Nottingham in February he was dressed like the invisible man. I thought it a bit parky (and I’m from Gateshead) but Len found an East Midlands winter emotional to say the least. He put up posters of Wildebeaste running majestically across the plain but that didn’t really help. It also didn’t help that he was doing architecture and had to work in Nissan huts. He did this wearing everything M&S provided and still got cold.
When I’m not being a physics crank, I’m an AIDS crank, haha! No, well, I think possibly the AIDS sceptics have a partial point. I think there may be an element that the difference in Africa is simply poor general health, i.e. AIDS spreads faster (perhaps much faster) in people with compromised immune systems due to poor hygeine, nutrition, etc. That is, it’s still caused by HIV. But HIV has a much easier time getting transmitted in third world poverty stricken populations. I’m not entirely happy with the idea that it’s down to the darkies being immoral that some in the West like to bandy about. Very Victorian, that.
***
Back in the 90s when I was being an electrician, I worked with a gay builder and we did some gay venues, regular alterations, maintenance, etc, we were a sort of fixture. Spent a great deal of time socialising gay and getting very drunk gay and had a whale of a time.
***
The general point about alphas, I don’t really follow all that “game” theory stuff, I think it’s vastly overstated and theoretically flawed. But there are some males who find it vastly easier to pull than their fellows, I’m just using the term to mean them. The general point is that in the straight world, there is really a lot less shagging around than people like to believe. I think there’s simply insufficient to sustain an AIDS pandemic, particularly as it seems that female->male transmission is far less likely than male->female or male->male.