Here we are at the two hundredth anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his seminal work ‘On The Origin of Species‘ and if, in the darkness of night, there are scrabbling and shuffling noises to be heard echoing around Westminster Abbey then that will be him, turning in his grave, struggling to get out so he can shout out something politically incorrect.

I recall Darwin did not much like the term ’survival of the fittest’ which is – let’s face it – a bit of a ‘News of the World‘ type spin on his preferred term ‘natural selection’ but if he did manage to claw his way out of his grave, clambering over Isaac Newton on his way out, then it might well be his term of choice.

What he should notice, after a little bit of research and good old fashioned observation, is that evolution – in terms of the homo sapien anyway – has quite possibly started to go backwards.

Call it what you like, evolution has rolled along nicely and undisturbed for many millions of years doing it’s thing. A little change here, a small improvement there. Wings for that one. Opposable thumbs for this one. Binocular vision over here. Improved sense of smell for the one with the long nose. And it will continue to roll along as well. We can’t actually stop it and nor should we. But we can make the huge mistake of messing with it. And when people discover they can do something there is always some bozo who goes ahead and does it.

And one of the bozos in this case is the one who came up with the idea of the Health and Safety Executive – a body whose sole aims are to remove all of the fun and the risk out of life. Natural Selection doesn’t mean people born with disease or disability are left to die before they can reproduce although let’s be totally honest here and recognise that this was once the case and still is outside of us humans. Natural Selection means that the idiot who doesn’t use a ladder properly, falls off and dies is removed from the gene pool to the betterment of us all. These days he probably can’t even buy the ladder in the first place without a three week training course and an NVQ in ladder usage. And should he borrow a ladder from someone else the H&S men will slap a fine on him and send him for corrective therapy.

Evolution basically works by promoting the good bits, the clever bits, the enhanced bits and letting the bad bits and the useless bits fall by the wayside. And the ones who have got those good bits get to pass them on like a family heirloom. And those with the bad bits fall off ladders. But other bozos, including those who came up with the life-stifling theory of Political Correctness, have decreed that we all have to be equal. Or all the same. As I have said many times before, this means we all have to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. So those with good bits that are really worthy of evolutions attention have to have those good bits repressed. It’s happening all around us. They get forced to go to Comprehensive Schools. They get turned down for jobs because one of the candidates was clearly more stupid than they were or comes from an ethnic minority and can’t speak the language buy hey – positive discrimination is on their side.

We are in the process of screwing evolution up big time. People survive disease and disability that would have once – and not so long ago – taken them out of the gene pool. Being clever, intelligent and inventive is almost frowned upon. Being competitive is OK as long as you restrict it to buying lottery tickets. And taking risks or having fun is outlawed.

And before we realise it, we’ll all be growing more body hair and starting to suffer from a strong urge to climb trees.

I have touched on this subject before but events have now moved on a little and the battle lines are drawn. But first, a little personal history.

When I was a kid I used to play outdoors – most often in the forest that we lived beside. In warm weather and when school was out, my friends and I would disappear early in the morning and as long as I touched base at home from time to time it was likely to be sunset before I returned. We had a ‘play’ area that stretched for many miles and on those hot, lazy days, we would get cuts and bruises, eat the blackberries growing in the hedgerows and get dirty and covered in the detritus of the forest floor. The cuts miraculously healed themselves, the blackberries didn’t poison us and the dirt? Well, what was wrong with a bit of dirt. It washed off. Childhood was an experience, slowly pushing the boundaries of our independence and the odd medical emergency was a necessary part of learning to cope. We learned which adults to avoid, which ones we could rely on for help if needed and mourned a wasted day if the weather forced us inside.

As a young teenager I still remember buying my first pair of headphones. I bought them in a local hi-fi shop where the guy behind the counter not only had good product knowledge but was quite happy to impart it because he wanted you to go away happy with your purchase. And he wanted you to come back some day and buy something else. So I got advice. But more importantly I got to handle the goods and try them out for comfort and sound quality. That’s right, they went on my head and I put the earpieces over my ears. My actual ears. I guess many people before me had tried on some of those phones and guess what… I didn’t catch any diseases. My ears didn’t fall off two weeks later and the world as I knew it did not come to an end. This was a truly serious and risky business – my life was at stake. But I survived and, what’s more, ended up with a pair of headphones that were just what I wanted, fit perfectly and eventually gave me years of service.

Wind forward to today and I am in need of a new pair of headphones. You already know what this is about. There they are on a rack in John Lewis, all bubble packed in that stiff plastic you need to take an axe to and no – you can not try them on before you buy. You can not test for comfort, fit and, above all, you can not test the sound quality. So says the evil Health and Safety Executive. So – I naturally ask – what happens if I get them home, manage to prise them out of the packaging and when I get back from the local Accident and Emergency department find they don’t fit? Well – said the guy at John Lewis – you get your money back less 10%. I kid you not – that was what I was told. I bought them – those ones in the picture – whilst making a verbal declaration at the till that I expected a full refund if I had to return them. You know the rest. Got them home – there was much swearing and searching for industrial strength tools to penetrate the packaging which, in the end I managed to do with no blood being spilled and do they fit? Of course they don’t. For a £69 pair of phones from a respected manufacturer like Denon they are bloody useless. If I put them on and someone asks me a question to which I nod my head – they fall right off. When my wife tried them on, the ear cups dangled somewhere around her lobes missing the actual ear altogether. Did it say on the box that they were for people with really big ears and long heads? Did the guy in Lewis’s inform me they were no good to me because my head just wasn’t big enough? How many petty laws might he have broken of he had done?

So – as I said at the top – the battle lines are drawn and these have got to go back. Now forgive me for this but I am about to say something hypocritical. I have ranted enough in the past about petty regulations that strangle our every moment and dictate our every move but sometimes you just have to bite your tongue. What I want to know is who wins between the appalling Health and Safety and the office of Fair Trading who dictate that what I buy has to be fit for the purpose?

I guess I am about to find out.

Let’s start out by saying that I know smoking is an unhealthy thing to do. I accept that.

I happened to be in the eye department of the local hospital recently. Stuck to the wall of the waiting area was a poster that simply said in large letters ‘Smoking Causes Blindness’.

The cigarette packet in the photo, in common with all packs sold in the UK, states quite clearly that ‘Smoking Kills’. As a smoker I am told that I have a high risk of a heart attack, a stroke and lung cancer. Because smoking causes heart attacks, strokes and lung cancer. I have also been told that the pain I sometimes get in my knees and the fact that my feet and hands are often cold are due to impaired blood circulation caused by smoking.

These days, no matter what eventually sends me to my grave, I bet someone will put it down to me being a lifelong smoker. Just about every ailment, it sometimes feels like – is caused by or made considerably worse by smoking.

And then there are all those other people around whom I have smoked at one time or another whose death I have quite clearly contributed to. Because, according to other notices, posters, leaflets, government health warnings and the anti-smoking brigade – so-called ‘passive smoking’ also kills.

It’s black and white. Smoking kills. Passive smoking kills.

In the first, say, 70 odd years of the 20th century, the vast majority of people smoked. And those that didn’t were constantly living in a thick, smoke-laden atmosphere. In buses, trains, restaurants, clubs, pubs, cinemas, theatres, offices, factories, shops – smokers lit up anywhere and everywhere. And at home, if your Mum didn’t smoke then your Dad probably did. And your brothers and sisters and the Uncle that dropped in every now and then… Smoke and smokers were everywhere and it was virtually impossible to escape from them.

So here’s what I want to know. How did the human race survive the age of tobacco? Why didn’t we all die out?

I don’t know about you but I like to know where my food has been and what is in it. Reading through the ingredient list on some packaged foods these days requires a specialist dictionary and more time than anyone really wants to spend in a supermarket. But I have learnt how important it can be.

My wife is seriously allergic to a few things – especially fish and eggs – and has to check and double check everything before she buys and because of this, I have learnt to do the same. And it is amazing the number of everyday food items that contain something derived from fish.

Bread, however, shouldn’t be one of them.

We bought a bag of bread rolls at our local Co-op. The thoughtfully printed ‘allergy advice’ was interesting to say the least:

“This product contains, or may contain, traces of the following: Nuts, Sesame Seeds, Wheat, Gluten, Barley, Egg, Oats, Lupin, Milk, Mustard, Rye, Soya, Sulphites, Fish, Crustacean, Celery, Molluscs.”

I think you ought to go back and read that again!

Yes – this is bread we are talking about here. Notice that it only ‘may contain’ wheat. Well – with all that other stuff in it there probably isn’t much room for the wheat. Who needs wheat in their bread!

I had an uncle who was a baker but I bet he never made bread with Molluscs. Or Crustacean. Or Fish. Bread just isn’t supposed to have all this in it.

And Lupin. Lupin? What the fuck is Lupin doing in my bread?

I could probably find all kinds of research into the ‘mobile phone effect’ if I cared to spend time looking but like a child contemplating the existence of Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy, I’m not sure I really want to know. Give a particular form of human behaviour a name and class it as a disorder and you are expected to stop poking fun at those who show signs of having it.

I am referring, of course, to that strange behaviour some people exhibit when they are talking to someone on their mobile phone. If they were having the conversation with someone sitting beside them they would just talk normally. Put a mobile into their hand and suddenly they are an actor on a stage delivering a soliloquy for everyone to hear.

Myself and my dear wife travelled a few miles yesterday on a bus bursting at the seams with passengers making it’s way into the centre of Lincoln. There was the usual low murmur of various conversations taking place and if you listened carefully you might pick up a word here or a short phrase there as is usual. People tend not to bellow when simply conversing with a companion. But then, suddenly cutting through the background hum like a knife, came this one, youngish, female voice who appeared to want to inform everyone within a fifty yard radius all about her recent trip to the dentist.

Without going into boring detail we were treated to the whole saga from the pain to what the dentist told her – to the treatment she underwent in the dental chair right through to the antibiotics he prescribed for her. We even learnt that this was only the second time in her life she had been prescribed drugs, the first being her doctor prescribing her oral contraception.

Did I and my fellow travellers want to know all this? Of course we didn’t. Was this a rare event? We all know it isn’t because we experience this phenomena regularly. And yes – it annoys the hell out of the majority of people.

When the young lady finally finished her conversation and an eerie hush fell over the audience, I was very tempted to stand up and tell them all about my recent hospital experience with a delicate orifice, a small camera and a tube of KY but sadly for them we pulled into the bus station where were all to disembark so now they will never know.