Blame my teacher. He made me think.

My captive audience is literally that: captive. They are forced, day in, day out, to read my mindless ramblings and satisfy my ego. However, there are you precious few out there who read my blog not through compulsion, but for some other reason. Quite what, I can't fathom, but I'm grateful all the same.

In an effort to keep you here, and to keep them sane, I am going to deviate from the current trend and write something that is not a lame joke. Something heartfelt, thought-through and, hopefully, thought provoking. I'm going to talk about a duck. Let's call him Jim, after the famous duck-hunter Jim 'hunts-the-ducks' Brethaupt. He was paid to hunt the elusive and dangerous duck, to protect his home nation of Blorffonia. He flew out to the home of the ducks, not knowing whether he would return to see his wife and 2 children ever again. However, he was happy enough, because his country paid for appropriate equipment to keep him safe.

But then, back in Blorffonia, the Prime Minister saw that the MHS (the Mediocre Health Service) was getting into a bit of debt, and so he decided to cut Jim's budget a bit. Just a little, here and there, and no-one thought it would make much of a difference. Unfortunately, the MHS progressed further into debt, and so Jim's budget was cut further, and he couldn't afford the necessary equipment to protect him from the ducks. Eventually, Jim was flown at by a particularly brave duck, fell into a vat of toxic gunk and died shortly before turning into Anne Widdecombe.

Now, obviously, this is not a real situation (or at least that's what the papers say). However, if you change a few words, it does become real. Such as 'and.' Or '2.' My politics teacher said that money was taken away from the forces to give to the NHS justly. After all, it was another way of saving lives, yes?

Alas, no, it is not. The difference is that the chaps in Afghanistan and Iraq are putting themselves in dangerous situations so that we can sleep soundly at night. And yet we don't pay for the equipment that saves their lives. They join up knowing that they might not live, but that doesn't mean that their deaths are acceptable. I love the NHS, and think it is something that the UK should be immensely proud of. But giving it money instead of the forces is not just a different way of saving lives. It's border-line criminal.

Oh, and these damn jokes are ending soon. Perhaps I'll do a countdown. There's something to look forward to, eh?