A World Aids Day Christmas Carol

Today, it just seems somehow apt to bring you this utterly utterly non-work-safe link – I don’t know if it has sound (my work computer doesn’t have sound, so I’ve no idea ’til I get home) so be careful. via Green Fairy…

The 12 STDs of Christmas.

A Moral reminder for the Festering Season.

Current thoughts

Looking at the article in the Guardian, I have to say that I don’t find it surprising to know that hetersexual HIV infections now outnumber homosexual ones. What happened to the HIV/AIDS adverts of the 80s and 90s? They’ve all disappeared, sucked up into the air of apathy and “it won’t happen to me” that seems to abound.

When HIV first came out as “the new threat”, condom adverts and so on were everywhere. Everyone knew that condoms meant safety from HIV, as well as a range of other transmitted diseases. Now, if you ask teenagers – or even a whole load of adults – they don’t know, or more damningly, they don’t bother. Yes, we need a better programme of sex education – not just for schoolchildren, but for everyone.

The British HIV Association aims to improve education and knowledge about HIV – as does the National Aids Trust. But what the entire AIDS industry (if you’ll pardon the expression – I simply can’t think of a better word for it) needs is a vociferous spokesperson, a media-savvy entity that can push for the education, the advertising, the knowledge.

In March of this year, NAT started the “Are you HIV prejudiced?” campaign. Had you even heard of it? Have you seen anything about it, anywhere? Me either.

There are enough HIV information sites out there – now we just need to find a way to make them more visible, to put the knowledge out and force an apathetic and complacent public to take note.

It’s not just me

I’ve just had to laugh at the story from today’s Manchester Evening News about the christmas obsessive who’s had her Santa Claus kidnapped. People after my own heart.

Personally, I don’t have a particular problem with people who insist on doing up their houses in all forms of cheap nasty tacky decorations for the Festering Season. Well OK, I might take the piss, and despair a bit – but at the end of the day, it’s their property, they can do with it what they want.

However, when people put their external christmas decorations up on Bonfire Night, (5th November, for non-UK readers) that’s taking the piss. I can’t blame people for taking Santa hostage in order to make sure that (as detailed in the story) she turns off all the external lights etc. at midnight, rather than leaving them on all night. Seems reasonable to me…

World AIDS Day

Well, December 1 rolls round again. World Aids Day – and still there’s so far to go. A new policy has been announced to ensure another 3 million people get treatment for AIDS by the end of 2005 More information about it is available at the UNAids site. But at the end of the day, that isn’t likely to even cover the number of new infections over the next two years. Currently, there are about 42 million people in the world who are HIV positive – and the number is growing, regardless of initiatives, plans, policies, and charities.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has a whole repository of information about HIV on a global scale. Even Weasel-Boy Blair has thrown in his ten penceworth of soundbite bullshit today. Not that he appears to give a stuff about HIV and AIDS at any other time of the year.

And that – as with many other special “days” – is the crux of the problem. HIV isn’t just something tobe talked about and thought about on one day a year. For 42 million people it’s there day in, day out – a constant reminder of mortality. For millions more it’s a reality, a life measured in six-month segments as they get regular tests, waiting for their own red-blood-cell lottery to come up, hoping it’ll beat the odds, expecting that one day it won’t. HIV is here to stay, and in common with every other virus in the world, we’ve no idea how to even begin curing it.

Fucking cunting Monday

Oh, it’s going to be one of those days. Two and a half FUKING hours to get into work. No reason, no excuse, and the GMPTE (the people who supposedly co-ordinate/organise public transport in Greater Manchester) both a) have no fucking clue why the entire of East Manchester is apparently served by two buses today, and b) don’t appear capable of giving a shit. Orbital levels of pissed off, that don’t even bear a vague resemblance to normality. So far as I’m concerned, just on the basis of today both Stagecoach Manchester and First Bus both now qualify for a world-infamous “Piss-Up in a Brewery” award.