Author: 6000

What Sky News has missed

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It’s strange how things happen. Only a couple of days ago, we were enjoying the story of simple country folk together, going about their er… “business” without a care in the world. And now, suddenly, the role of the British vet is seen in a whole different light (actually, thank goodness) as an outbreak of Foot & Mouth Disease (FMD) in Surrey, UK is investigated.

As a microbiologist, this case is particularly interesting to me. I’ve always had a bit of a personal interest in epidemiology (the study of the spread of disease) and the detective work that goes with it, since reading the story of the Broad Street pump. I guess I’m just a frustrated forensic scientist, deep down. With a love of bacteria. The FMD outbreak in 2001 was devastating for the British farming industry and cost the livelihoods of many hundreds of farmers. Over 7 million animals were culled and the total cost of the episode was in excess of £8bn. Behind those easily reported figures though, the true human cost remained largely hidden. It was a very a big effect for a very small virus (about 0.0000001mm in size). So I guess in a way it’s understandable that, so far, the rolling news stories have all been about the human side of the story.

That’s the way that British news has been heading for some time now – demonstrated admirably by the hopelessly overblown Madeleine McCann case. After all, there’s nothing that reels in the viewers like a distraught farmer, crying in front of the baying newsmen; the pride of his life – his thoroughbred bull who he describes as being “like a pet” – shot in front of him, along with the rest of his herd of 100 cattle.

But for me, what makes this whole sorry scene even worse is that this outbreak appears to have begun at a research laboratory site nearby to the (so far) two affected farms. That it seems to be down to poor laboratory practice makes me even more angry for the poor farmers and even more incredulous that the news teams in the area appear to have missed what I think is the bigger story here. The virus that causes FMD is one of the picornaviridae, called Aphthovirus. Because of the lack of any cure for the disease, the lightning quick transmission and the low numbers of viral particles needed to cause infection, aphthoviruses are classified as a Containment Level 4 pathogens by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

Just to put you in the picture – and I could list the others, but I think that one will do – essentially that’s the same classification as the Ebola virus.
Step forward Dustin Hoffman in a spacesuit. Or something.

Now, I’m not suggesting for a minute that the research facilities at Pirbright have Ebola on site. That would be silly. But there is something utterly terrifying about a pathogen “escaping” from a CL4 facility. That simply cannot be allowed to happen. It’s the stuff of hideously paranoid paperbacks, of low budget films, of conspiracy theorists wildest dreams.

And now – in all probability – it’s reality.

Why have Sky News missed this so far? As I said – this is the stuff of movies – surely right up their street?

I think that maybe they just haven’t realised the “Ebola link” yet. So once again they wheel out Prof Hugh Pennington (he and I have history – grr) and his eyebrows and he says… well… nothing of interest. No big surprise there. Literally.

So, Sky et al, if you’re reading this:

Here is the news.
A virus as dangerous as Ebola has escaped from a laboratory just outside London.
Stop interviewing crying farmers and get on with some real journalism.
Much obliged.

Vets – they’re all at it

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Just thought I’d slip a quick one in while my wife is watching some god-awful British drama about an incestuous veterinary practice in North Yorkshire. I’ve only watched it for about 5 minutes (I really couldn’t take any more), but even I’ve worked out that the receptionist’s hubby (a vet) is bonking his assistant, the practice manager’s husband (who is also a vet) has bonked his wife’s best mate and his sister-in-law is having it away with her ex-boyfriend (not a vet).
In fact, the only one not getting any seems to be the gay bloke that cleans out the kennels.
It’s all tremendously complicated. And poorly acted.

I suppose that if there is a lesson one can learn from this though it’s “don’t marry a vet”. They obviously struggle to keep Simon Sausage in Terry Trousers.
To be honest I’d be sorely tempted to stray if I were married to that lass that used to be in Coronation Street though. (Apparently, her name is Gaynor Faye). Maybe it was those horsey teeth that attracted the vet in the first place.
You can just see him trying to impress her in the pub: “Open up wide, love – and I’ll tell you ‘ow old you are!”

Enough.
It was a surprisingly bright weekend in Cape Town. Sunday was even warm too. An opportunity to take stock of the damage caused by the recent heavy rain, thoroughly dry one’s goats out and allow one’s son to get absolutely filthy in the garden. However, any thoughts that we may have seen the last of the winter were firmly dashed by the lashings of rain and filthy weather we endured today. And don’t get me started on Cape Town drivers when it rains. Grrrrr.

OK – I said that this would be quick one. I wouldn’t lie to you, dear reader.
More soon. Possibly.

Update: OK, it seems that the bloke that cleans out the kennels ISN’T gay!
That dachshund was definitely female…

More on our ARS

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The sun has shone upon Cape Town this week. And about time too. the four cold fronts which swept through last week gave us floods, gales, thunder and hail. Miserable.
I await the figures for the number of caprine casualties with a heavy heart. Regular readers of this site will be all too aware that these gentle creatures are more susceptible to inclement weather than other more hardy livestock and I know of a herd of cattle lost in the floods and at least two donkeys which were blown away in the high winds.

The weather even halted work on the new stadium for the 2010 World Cup. That in itself is pretty unusual as they have been working from dawn til dusk (and beyond) in order to keep ahead of schedule. Here’s a magnificent picture of how they were getting along before rain stopped play. I think you can see from this aerial shot why the Metropolitan golf course now has a par of just 17 rather than 70. Look on the bright side, guys – at least you can get back to the clubhouse bar more quickly now!


Looking the other way (we call it “east”), towards the city centre, you can see the proximity of the stadium to the Waterfront (which is next to the marina) and Cape Town CBD. Other points to note are the nearest shop selling alcohol (red roof, right-hand side) and the nearest MacDonalds (green roof, dead centre, between building site and roundabout)*. It’s comforting to think that they consider the workers’ needs when they site this sort of massive project.

There are, in fact, still a few legal challenges – mainly from the “mean green” environmental lobby – to be overcome before stadium gets official planning permission.
Now, I know what you’re thinking and yes, you’re right – they’ve actually done a teeny-weeny bit of work already. Hell, even I can remember when all this was fields – it was only 4 months ago! It’s ok, they were given special permission to start. It seems unlikely that work will be halted at the eleventh hour (well, actually, looking at those pictures, it’s more like the fourteenth hour now, isn’t it?) but this being South Africa, one can never rule it out.

All in all, it’s an amazing sight and there’s already a great deal of interest from various corporate sponsors as to who will run the stadium post 2010. Whoever does so is going to have control of one of the most remarkable structures in one of the most beautiful locations in the world.
All they’ve really done so far is dug the foundations and yet already it’s been described as the southern hemisphere’s Wembley.


Let’s just hope that doesn’t mean that is going to take 7 years to build…

*My place of work is also on this picture. I work in a big yellow castle (Yes, seriously I do) (No, it’s not an inflatable bouncy castle) – I’ll give a prize to whoever can find it first.

Taking Shorty to the WBHS

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One of the more mundane tasks I do from time to time in my line of work is to travel to another lab nearby and collect specimens for our experiments. This basically involves tipping infected sputum from 240 tubes into… er… 240 more tubes.

I’m sure Lizzy M and the other tutors on my Masters course would be proud to see my agile scientific mind being utilised so thoroughly. It’s not exactly rocket science. That would involve boosters, liquified gases and exciting roaring noises, none of which I have the luxury of enjoying.


I do, however, get to listen to Heart 104.9 – which claims to be “The Soul of Cape Town” – while I’m there, blasting out the latest sounds via a tinny clock radio in the corner. It’s not my kind of music. In fact, most of it seems to be about how some bloke is going to take “Shorty” “to the VIP” and what “Shorty” is going to do for him in return. Presumably, the “Shorty” in question, isn’t Danny DeVito. The thought of him rewarding Notorious LARD for entry into the back room of some LA nightclub is just not appealing. Well, not to me anyway.My own little Shorty, all 75cm and 11.4kg of him (that’s slightly taller, but much lighter than Danny DeVito) continues to be frustrated by the chilly winter weather. He knows that there’s mud to be eaten on Wynberg Boys High School field and he knows that he’s the toddler for the job. We had a great time chasing geese and ibissess.. ibiss’s.. ibii.. an ibis (x2) up there last week.

. .Rugger?  Boy  Guilty
More pics here.

He’s not the only one that’s fed up with winter now.
In between the dry and sunny (but chilly) days came yesterday. Grey, moody, windy and a bit wet.
A bit like Michael Douglas, but without the Welsh tart on its arm.
Not really that bad, but enough for the organisers to postpone our football match in case we got a bit cold and damp. Pathetic. If we called off games for weather like that in the UK, we’d never kick a damn ball.

Next week’s game is an early kick off, which will allow the team to head off to Newlands immediately after the final whistle to see some “real” football – Pele, Eto’o, Gullit, Radebe and a myriad of other international stars in the 90 minutes for Mandela exhibition match.
Let’s hope they don’t cancel everything there because of a bit of drizzle on the breeze…

The Big South African Crime Post

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This post won Runner-Up in the 2008 SA Blog Awards BEST POST category.

Wow. What a week.
We had the arbitration panel’s report on the Tevez affair, we had the new crime stats released in South Africa and I actually managed to play a game of football for the first time in almost three months, the last of which goes some way towards explaining the bruise on my arse. Some way, not by any means all.
It was inflicted by a stoutly-built Slavic dwarf. Seriously. I’m still not sure how he reached.

As for the Tevez scandal, I’m not going to start on here about that. First off, I’d have to try and explain it, which is going to be time-consuming and suitably subjective. Then, by the time I upload this, everything will all be out of date. And, by the time you read it in 2009, they’ll probably still be bickering over some minor legal technicality. It’s time that football authorities clamped down on the things that are ruining our beautiful game. Those things would include dodgy transfer deals, Sheffield wednesday and stocky Bulgarian midgets.

Which leaves us with the hot potato, the thorny apple, the… the… pokey fishcake – whatever – that is South Africa and crime. Woo.
OK. For starters – South Africa has a big problem with crime.
There. I said it. Whoever that was at the back who suggested I wouldn’t say it was wrong.
You people who deny that there’s a problem, get with the programme. There is. Believe it, because it’s true.
And some of it is on the increase. Although equally, some of it is on the decrease too.
The stats show that South Africa remains one of the most violent societies on earth – the figures are shocking. People pay their taxes and they are right to expect more to be done to reduce rates of crime in the country.

That said, while the stories in the newspapers may make grim reading, the majority of us carry on with our lives without being directly or personally affected by crime. According to the latest figures, 40 in every 100,000 people will be murdered in SA each year, but lest we forget, that still leaves 99,960 who won’t be. I’d love them to be better, but for me, those odds (equating to 2,500-1) are still pretty good. Let’s face it, would you really bet on a horse that was a 2,500-1 outsider and expect to win? No. Because that’s what odds are all about – indicating the probability of something actually occurring. Moreover, by being sensible and avoiding situations and places where you might put yourself in danger, you can lower that risk still further. You can’t do that with your horse.

There’s another more sinister side to this issue as well – race.
Because of the ongoing inequalities in many areas of South African life, there is a perception that the majority of crime victims are white.
Not true. By far the majority of crime victims are black. But the average white person is more likely to have a computer, internet access, education to be able to write to their local newspaper and so forth than their black counterpart. So we do hear an awful lot from them.
It’s just another way that the press exaggerates the public perception of crime in this country. Yes, the power of the press can be an important tool in bringing about change in society, but sadly, the current hysteria is counter-productive and the perception of the situation is actually far worse than the situation itself.
In addition, there really isn’t the need for the hysteria that the extremely vocal minority exhibit on online forums etc. Many of those seem to be ex-pat South Africans desperate to run their country down, perhaps in order to justify their decision to move away. That move was their decision and it’s their right to be allowed to make that choice. But while they tell the world about how dangerous South Africa is from their new homes thousands of miles away, we live here and we’d like to set the record straight.Do come to South Africa. Do behave sensibly as you would on holiday anywhere else in the world.
Don’t wave your iPod around in downtown Cape Town – it might get nicked. As it might in downtown New York, Amsterdam or Sydney.
Don’t wander round Nyanga on your own late at night. Or Harlem. Or the Manor Estate in Sheffield.
And really, don’t expect to be shot or mugged as you get off the plane – that’s just paranoia – you’ll be sadly disappointed and you’ll look proper stupid doing your ninja stealth moves along the air-bridge for no reason whatsoever.

I’d especially welcome comments on this post; from those in SA, those with an SA connection and those with a passing interest since they started reading this brilliant blog – what do you hear about SA in your country? Please take time to indicate which category (if any) you fall into – just for interest’s sake. 

Keep safe, wherever you are.

Comments from this post on ballacorkish.net (my old site) can be read here.