The Age of Silly Science

'We seem to be spending all the money on the most ridiculous experiments'

OVER the last 20 years, different governments have told us that there isn't enough money in the country's pot to send soldiers to fight with little more than sticks and stones, to bring the country's children out of poverty, and to allow the NHS to invest in soap and water.

But now, all of a sudden, the government seems to be rolling in dough. They can afford to cut interest rates to two per cent, nationalise all the banks, buy every house in the country, and still afford to carry out £10 million surveys into the recent proliferation of nettles and brambles.

There have been recent suggestions that there is insufficient funding in Britain's science and technology schemes.

It is said that the UK invests only 28% of what other countries such as Germany and Switzerland are investing in their science programmes.

And it's not surprising children are not as interested in science. There has been a decline of 20% in students taking science courses over the last 15 years.

There has been many health and safety rules recently that has meant that fewer experiments can be done in school labs and the fun has been taken out of science. Today you just have to sit and do calculations because throwing a small piece of sodium in a bowl of water and watching it ignite is now said to be too dangerous in many schools.

There was a time, a few years ago, when you could throw a big lump of sodium in to a large bowl and take Kings Heath off the map, and gone are the days when you could sprinkle bits of the sodium in the teacher's hair and hope for rain.

It seems that there are going to be a reduced number of scientists in years to come. In the future everyone will be able to defend criminals, analyse society's class system, and tell you about the life of Winston Churchill in 4 different languages - but no one will know how to replace the batteries in the new state-of-the-art remote control.

And the scientists that we will have will be analysing whether how many times we blink in a day has anything to do with the uptake of leprosy and whether eating only dairy products will cause you to sprout an extra toe.

With all the famine in the world, the energy crisis, and the fact the Earth is supposed to boil itself into eternity, you would think that Britain's scientists are busy in their bunkers; scratching their heads and drinking 10 cups of coffee an hour trying to come up with some solutions.

But no. We seem to be spending all the money on the most ridiculous experiments.
Yesterday a report was released suggesting that children "chewing their food slowly" would help to reduce the risks of cancer and that the more intelligent you are, the more healthy your sperm.

Anyone who believes this had better think about adoption.

While our European cousins are trying to cure all diseases and the US are trying to set up camp on new planets, here in Britain we're spending millions on finding out that passive smoking is harmful, that if you pour boiling water on your hand it may hurt, and are investigating which type of cheese tastes the best.

Women who take HRT will have a stroke or become so fat they have to be collected by the council and taken to be deflated. Range Rovers cause global warming and global warming is bad because we don't like it when the weather's hot.

We're all going to die because we eat red meat. Eating a sausage per day will give you a stomach ulcer and even worse - if it's an Irish sausage your head will explode.

If you eat butter or drink milk, you will die an agonising death and if you use a mobile phone or go near a pylon, you will turn into Jackie Stallone.

And that's if cornflakes don't get to you first.