Monthly Archives: September 2010

Fun at Pod Delusion Live

So, Tuesday night saw a live version of the Pod Delusion, a sort of podcast version of FOOC from a skeptic view point. They have had a weekly audio programme for the last year built up of short contributions from a variety of people, including me, and were celebrating their birthday by doing what they usually do in front of a live pub audience.

Despite the travel, I jumped at the opportunity and dusted off my gay blood ban material and added in a few jokes that would not have been appropriate last time I used it in Full Council.

It went very well. People laughed a lot. They laughed at the jokes I wrote and even found some of the other bits funny too.

There’s a blog post with some videos in it here, and the one of me is below.

(“I’m up here!”)

The full piece will doubtless be available as an audio file on this week’s Pod Delusion, along with some sterling other contributors and ending up with some jolly songs.

The bit of the evening I was dreading most was the questions, but in fact two good points were raised.

Firstly part of my speech included referring to Typhoid Mary, and someone in the audience rightly picked me up in that. Whilst in common parlance Typhoid Mary just means pariah, I had just a few weeks ago read the WP page for Typhoid Mary, and the real story is much worse, and wholly inappropriate for use in the gay blood campaign. What’s worse still is that I knew that! Typhoid Mary was a healthy carrier of Typhoid Fever. She was not ill herself, but was able to infect others. Through her work as a cook she infected at least 50 other people, three of whom died. She refused to believe she was infectious, and spent at least part of her life behind bars.

So, she was infected but didn’t know it, refused to comply with the health-based rules, and ended up infecting and causing the deaths of others. Really, really not the sort of case to invoke in the arguments around the gay blood ban.

The second question was around HIV incidence and who was the largest group of people now being infected. I wasn’t sure on the night and the questionner has subsequently got in touch on Twitter with two documents of interesting data which a) show that heterosexual infections are now more common than gay ones and b) although there are now more gay men being diagnosed HIV+, a higher rate of diagnosis probably doesn’t mean higher incidence, just that more of those who have it, know about it.

From Blood Service’s point of view the fact that the straight infections count for a larger proportion of new infections is probably not helpful to the arguments around the gay blood ban, because the group of straight people is much bigger than the group of gay people. So incidence amongst gay men is around 5% whilst in straight people as a whole it’s probably only 0.001%.

The third question was “do you have to have anal sex to catch HIV.” No you don’t, but it helps.

Perhaps the most touching thing to happen was after I got home. I start my schtick talking about the Anthony Nolan Trust and the bone marrow register. I’ve signed up, and given a saliva sample – and just last week received my donor pack.

This, and carrying a donor card, I do partly because it’s right, and partly “pour encourager les autres.” If some parts of the NHS are happy to deal with gay men, that should be encouraged.

It’s probably quite unlikely my number will come up and they find someone who’s a match who needs my bone marrow. But if they do, I will do what I promised to, and go to London for medical treatment and donate bone marrow. Most of the time, that’s a fairly simple course of injections followed by sitting hooked up to a machine a bit like a dialysis machine. More rarely, it involves an operation.

The person who got in touch after I got home wanted to thank me for signing up with the Anthony Nolan Trust – because he was a leukaemia survivor, who was only still alive thanks to bone marrow donation. His came from a sibling rather than the register, but it was still a really interesting story he sent me.

He has blogged about it, and you can read his moving story, intricately woven into his atheism, here.

So, look out for the Pod Delusion Live recording when it comes out tomorrow. Here are a few links to past recordings I’ve done too:

Weird direct mail

Two odd bits of target mail from charities and estate agents this week.

The first was from estate agent Harts (who used to have the excellent marketing slogan: “Harts is where your home is”). It’s a postcard. The picture on the front is the kitchen of of one of my neighbours. They appear to have mailed it to everyone in my street. We’ve just let one house like yours, we can let yours too, is the message.

The second is from British Red Cross. It’s a bumper thick envelope, and can’t have been cheap to mail. It’s unaddressed. It contains two blank notelet cards with flowers on, and a matching bookmark. Added to that is a letter asking for money, and a reply envelope that asks you to cross out the freepost line if you can afford a stamp. The letter says that a pen is included, but it wasn’t in mine.

Red Cross notelets

No sign of whether it’s targetted, but I can’t say I’m a big user of notelets, let alone flowery ones. And it does seem a little passive-aggressive – “Well – you have the notelets now, you might as well make a donation!” And it must cost a fortune! Stephen Tall (who should know) tells us that charities have to invest to raise money, but still…

Call for contributors: day of multilingual blogging

A long time ago, I did a degree in modern languages. To try and keep my skills from fading, I follow a few French and German language users on Twitter. And one of these, the French-speaking arm of the FCO let me know a few weeks ago of a planned event at the end of September.

The UK arm of the European Commission is hoping to celebrate European Day of Languages with a day of multi-lingual blogging. The date is 26th September, and you can read all about it on the EC Facebook page for the event.

We’d like to take part with a series of blog posts in a variety of languages, but to be honest, there are relatively few of us on the LDV team who remain fluent in Foreign. So we’d like to recruit writers from amongst our readers.

The parameters are these: we need short blog posts in non-English languages, with an English translation provided as well. You can choose almost any topic, but remember your audience will be predominantly Liberals from the UK. Please send your post to me <!–
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sto_user='alex'
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//–>alex – alex.hat.libdemvoice.org.spam.com (this is spam bot hidden email address, replace .hat. with @ and remove .spam.com for the real one) by 0.01 on 25th September to allow me to schedule the posts in advance. If your language uses a non-Latin font, please allow extra time so we can figure out the technicalities of making your words appear here on the Voice.

Il y a beaucoup des années, j’ai suivi des études des langues étrangères. Pour pas perdre mes pouvoirs linguistiques, je suis au Twitter quelques gens qui parlent en français et en allemand, dont une est la branche francophone du bureau de l’exterieur du gouvernement Britannique. C’est ce bureau qui m’a fait apprecier une journée prévue pour la fin de septembre.

Le bureau du Comission Européen dans le Royaume-Uni a l’intention de fêter la journée de langue avec un évenement de blogging multi-lingue qui aura lieu le 26 septembre. Vous pouvez-vous en enseigner sur ce site Facebook (en anglais)

Ici sur Lib Dem Voice, nous voulons prendre partis, mais entre nous, puisque nous ne parlons assez peu de langues étrangères c’est à vous de proposer des articles vous-mêmes.

Les paramètres sont ainsi: il nous faut des articles blog dans des langues à part de l’anglais, qui contient une traduction anglaise avec. Vous pouvez choisir n’importe quel sujet, mais il vous faut se souvenier que ceux qui lisent vos mots seront des Liberaux d’origine anglaise. Vous êtes invités d’envoyer votre article sur <!–
sto_dom='libdemvoice.org'
sto_user='alex'
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//–>alex – alex.hat.libdemvoice.org.spam.com (this is spam bot hidden email address, replace .hat. with @ and remove .spam.com for the real one) avant 0.01 du 25 septembre pourque je puisse les verifier en avance. Si vous avez l’intention d’écrire dans une langue qui exige des lettres non-latin, veuillez me contacter en avance de ce date et je préparerai les technicalities de faire apparaître vos mots. Et – svp – si j’ai fais des erreurs de français – soyez gentil quand vous me les expliques!