This just ain't right...

[scottiemom]

I think things have gone a bit too far (as if they haven't already) - I read this a few minutes ago:


Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has just declared that children should no longer be allowed to blow out candles on birthday cakes at parties. The official guidelines state:

‘To prevent the spread of germs when the child blows out the candles, parents should either provide a separate cupcake, with a candle if they wish, for the birthday child.’

What's next? No goodnight kisses??

Sheesh

[Gliden07]

This kind of stuff is getting out of hand!! And they wonder why families break down!! "MOMMY NEVER SHOWED ME ANY LOVE!!! AND I NEVER GOT TO BLOW OUT BIRTHDAY CANDLES!!!!"

[Ed Barrett]

Do the "Birthday Police" come to all the parties? I would just keep doing what has always been done and wait until these bozos get booted out of office. I thought people were smarter than that in Oz.

[cbrick]

This kind of stuff is getting out of hand!!

It's been out of hand for years now, it's like chopping down a tree by hand. They started out on a mighty oak with a small hatchet, chip, chip, chip.

A few years later they moved up to a larger hatchet still working on the same tree. Chip, chip, chip.

Then a double edged ax and larger chips. Chip after chip.

They are now up to a huge Paul Bunyan ax and there is very little left holding the mighty oak up.

Rick

[wv109323]

A well thought out decision by a board which work for the Government. I wonder if they were in a germ free environment when they made this decision. Meetings are a good place to pick up germs.

[Houndog]

That bunch of yo yo's would have a coronary if they saw how I grew up! Play ball in a cowpasture, get water out of a creek, play in the mud in the cowpasture, several kids drinking out of the same dipper or cup and if one kid got a childhood disease, every mom in the community brought their kid to "play" ( Think Measles , mumps, chickenpox, ETC) We were FAR more healthy than today's kids, even with all the super super sanatation and wonder drugs.

[Gliden07]

Two words "Bubble Wrap"!!

[savingprivateyang]

Oh man!!... You've got to be --->

[Mk42gunner]

Gee when we were kids if one of us had a birthday the candles got relit for each kid to blow them out (me, my brother and two cousins). Cow pasture baseball brings a whole new meaning to "Don't slide into first."

Robert

[Hardcast416taylor]

When my niece brought out my cake with candles yesterday I darn near got 2nd degree burns from the conflageration going on with the candles! They had 3 boxes of candles going on it. Took 3 of us to get them all out.Robert

[Norbrat]

As an Aussie, I am just so pleased the govt is spending my tax dollars so wisely!!

[David2011]

That bunch of yo yo's would have a coronary if they saw how I grew up! Play ball in a cowpasture, get water out of a creek, play in the mud in the cowpasture, several kids drinking out of the same dipper or cup and if one kid got a childhood disease, every mom in the community brought their kid to "play" ( Think Measles , mumps, chickenpox, ETC) We were FAR more healthy than today's kids, even with all the super super sanatation and wonder drugs.

No doubt a bunch of us on this board lived through all of that.

David

[Wal']

As an Aussie, I am just so pleased the govt is spending my tax dollars so wisely!!

September election gets closer each day..............out they go!!!!!!!!!!

[Smitty's Retired]

Cow pasture baseball brings a whole new meaning to "Don't slide into first."

Robert

What about dried cow patty frisbies? Flung a many of them.

[Ron]

See folks you are not the only ones with fools in places of influence; here in Australia we have plenty of them Down Under
I was brought up in the slums of the Gorbals in Glasgow, Scotland. Our play ground was a converted cemetery they just knocked over the marker stones and put in some swings. As kids by brothers and I played in some of the dirties places you could imagine and we rarely got sick because our imune system got plenty of contact with whatever bugs we were associating with at the time. None of mother yelling at us to go and wash because we were dirty unless we were about to sit down at the table to eat then we had to have clean hands. The other thing was we had a bath once a week if we were lucky, didn't cause us any problems.

[geargnasher]

Something I've noticed about my profession as a mechanic: We rarely get sick with colds, flu, stomach viruses, etc. I attribute a lot of that to strong immunity built from rolling around in filthy floorboards, digging behind dashboards, all the horrid stuff people store in their trunks and gloveboxes, not to mention contact contamination from driving after everyone from a high-school girl to a "cedar hacker" to a crack-smoking OTR trucker. We handle seatbelts, shifters, steering wheels, door handles, and get to take apart and shake out the cooties from the deepest recesses of people's vehicles. Dog hair, rotten hamburger wrappers, moldy french fries, everything you walked in or touched for the last three years, yup, we're coated in it by the end of the workday. I've had a lot of things get in my mouth, eyes, and nose that you wouldn't want on the bottom of your shoe. By and large, customers vehicles are pretty gross, but it does seem to build strong immunity. School teachers, bank tellers, and health-care professionals also among those that tend to fall into this category, being exposed to large groups of people in a very up-close way.

But freakin' BIRTHDAY CANDLES??? That sounds like a bad case of needing to justify one's job description in some branch of a useless gov't agency.

Gear

[sav300]

Gear,may I ask.What is a cedar hacker?

[blackthorn]

If they put one candle for each year on my birthday cake I would need a CO2 extinguisher to put out the fire!!

[429421Cowboy]

Too bad right doesn't have much to do with anything these days!

When we were kids we used to play outside everyday, going to work with ma and dad, raised around cows, horses, dogs and Lord knows what other critters, sure, stuff got on our faces, in our mouths and all over our clothes, but now that i'm 20, i am not allergic to a single thing that i know of! Kids being raised in hospital sanitary enviroments will only have problems for the rest of their lives from junk laws like this, and as Norbrat pointed out, a good use for tax money!

[Smitty's Retired]

sav300, Gear can correct me if my definition is different from his.

In the southern states, (around my area at least) Cedar Hacker or Cedar Whacker later became a derogatory term for someone who was kind of a bum or poor and unkept with little education, that was lazy and sorry.

But originally during the reconstruction years after the Civil War, when the railroads were being expanded, and foundries were being built, Cedar and Juniper trees were being used to make cedar railroad ties, bridge timbers, and for making charcoal. There were work camps for the railroads and for companies that produced the timbers and charcoal, that moved from area to area. Cedar Hackers and their families would follow these camps and gain employment chopping down cedars or working the saw mills and the burn yards for producing coal. If you ever saw pictures of some of the people who worked these camps, they were barely making an existence, and were generally dirty looking, almost like pictures of coal miners.