(b) I then saw a recent article saying that a US senator has suggested that restaurants should not have to make their employees wash their hands after toilet visits.
Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, made the comments on Monday during a speech criticizing business regulations.
"Let them decide" such issues, the newly elected lawmaker said.
His argument was that restaurants which did not require workers to wash their hands would quickly go out of business.
"But I think it's good to illustrate the point, that that's the sort of mentality we need to have to reduce the regulatory burden on this country," Mr. Tillis said.
He suggested that restaurants that did not require hand washing would have to alert customers with prominently displayed signs - itself a regulation.
I once read an old article about bar snacks – crisps (potato chips) and peanuts which were placed on the bar for customers. A public health inspector collected samples and discovered after tests that over 70% of the samples were contaminated with traces of urine and feces as well as saliva.
Do you really have to elect such people as your political representatives? I will wager you don't want to eat in his house.
Risk 4 – Attacks on women
As a woman I recognize that I that I am sometimes a potential target for men of a sick disposition.
I was in a strange city and although my hotel was part of a nationally recognized chain I was uncomfortable with the place from the outset.
My activities during that evening would probably shock some people but I believe that my body is mine and when I parked my car I confess that I was in a rosy mood having been with some men friends that evening.
I was walking through a number of cars in a poorly lit car park to reach my room when the attack took place, He came from behind a large bush and had a wicked looking knife and threatened to "mark me" unless I did what he wanted, Whatever it was he wanted, I kicked him between the legs as he approached and the knife fell to the ground, As my action had been so successful I kicked him again and he fell to the ground. I stamped on him and kicked him again several times before running to my room and calling the hotel switchboard and then the police,
To be fair, the police arrived within a few minutes but my assailant had vanished although the police found his knife and some spots of blood. To date, the police have not found him but they say they are confident that the blood will be conclusive evidence when he is found.
Risk 5 - Smoking
Apart from a few furtive puffs with several other girls in school when I was about 11 years old. I have never smoked.
Recently, I was walking from a restaurant with my date when he pulled out a packet of cigarettes and placed one in his mouth and proffered one to me. I declined and added "I hope you realize you won't be kissing me afterwards if I can smell that on your breath." He paused, took the cigarette from his mouth and we stood there for several seconds with him looking at the cigarette and then me.
He grinned at me "No kissing?" he said
"Nor anything else!" I replied
He pulled the pack from his pocket, replaced the cigarette, looked back at me and crushed the whole pack "I was going to give them up anyway!" he chuckled. Although it was bitterly cold, he collected his kiss with me leaning against a car.
When he let me come up for air there was a muted applause to one side and we turned to see a group of girls in the darkness of a smoking shelter on the edge of the restaurant's car park. They were all smoking and I noticed that although the temperature was around freezing, they were very scantily clad with no coats, bare arms and legs and I thought they must be mad to have come out into the cold for "another nail in their coffins" as one of my friends, a nurse, puts it.
For several days afterwards, I became aware of "the people outside." When smoking was first banned in offices and public places, it looked as if there were strike pickets or protesters out in force. I don't know when their numbers dwindled or when they became almost invisible, but the encounter at the restaurant made me wonder how many were still inhaling toxic waste after all the health warnings and punitive tax hikes their habit attracted.
It is by no means a scientific study but most of the people I saw on my travels seem to fall into two main groups: people who looked as if they might be economically disadvantaged and very young people. I have to visit or pass through a number areas of social deprivation and both groups become more visible there. Possibly because there seem to be fewer men around during the day, the number of women smokers far outnumbered the men.
In addition to the almost daily announced risks of cancer and lung disease; the ever stronger restrictions to limit the dangers of passive smoking – particularly where children are involved; the discomfort of having to go outside, whatever the weather and cigarette prices which seemed astronomical to me when I checked in a local shop seems to be huge disincentives to smoking and it may be that there are psychological reasons for the persistence of the "people outside".
Risk 6 - Driving
Many activities are banned while driving, either explicitly or by catch-all offences such as "Driving without due care and attention".
Using a mobile phone without a hands-free is prohibited in the UK and although there are prosecutions, it doesn't prevent drivers speeding through towns and down motorways with one hand clamped to their ear.
Eating and drinking while driving has been heavily penalized on occasions.
At least one driver has been prosecuted for reading a map spread out over the steering wheel while travelling at speeds of 70 mph in the outside lane and gripping the wheel with his knees
A woman was penalized after being filmed by the police driving without her hands on the wheel as she applied her make-up.
I use my car a lot either during the week travelling between pupil’s homes or longer journeys at weekends and during holidays. It is rare for me to travel in traffic without seeing the sort of behavior I mention above, sometimes bordering on the totally insane. The most recent was a mother with her back to the windscreen as she knelt on her seat to do something with the straps of her child's baby seat while the car travelled slowly down a busy shopping street.
Are such people unaware of the potential outcomes to themselves and other road users? I am quite a confident driver but it is sometimes very worrying that no matter how well I may drive, the unknown idiots behind the wheel of their killing machines can make driving a lottery.
I tend not to worry about potential risks in my life although that is not the same as ignoring such risks and even taking steps to minimize or eliminate them. In doing this I am very aware how politicians and others who affect public opinion can raise risk levels for ordinary people.
On terror, I am not just talking about the political debacle and military tragedy for all physically and emotionally involved in Afghanistan and Iraq but the wider "war on terror!" which has created the monster it was supposed to eradicate.
In other areas of life, there are powerful financial, religious, political forces which will not hesitate to undermine rational arguments to further their own ends. One of the major contributors to the hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of deaths from lung cancer and heart disease as a result of smoking has to be the corporate millions of dollars, pounds, francs etc. devoted to advertising a lethal product worldwide. In the US and UK, private medicine and insurance fund campaigns against publicly funded health care. Many here in the UK believe that the whole policy of the West on the Middle East, including the Iraq fiasco is based on the interests of the oil industry.
There are many forces compounding the level of risk we have to encounter and perhaps we should all start to investigate them.
Letter from a Citizen - con't on pg 56