Thursday, February 03, 2011

Ministry of Health vs All Malignant Ghosts

I had a bad meeting this morning in the Ministry of Health. I had been hired by a firm to correct a water supply drawing, because it had been rejected by the Ministry. In the meanwhile they built the facility and it is working without permit and without complaints for years. Anyway, I added several water security valves and so on, and sent in the design to print and submit. The idiots submitted once more the old drawing but I didnt catch it at first and tried to explain what my design was. It was penurious.

Half of Israel's population will have cancer in their lives, and thirty percent will die of cancer. No one is sure what causes cancer but the Israeli public is hysterical with fear and presses the Ministry to act forcefully to supress anything vaguely suspected to present a "danger" to the public. Thus now they are campaigning against gas stations - measuring carbohydrate vapors and ordering to move the tanks on the surface. Crazy. They are checking the water for homeopatic concentrations of supposed cancerigens, and they are closing down restaurants for one colibacteria tested in the soup. Any food served or sold to the public must be sterile and "pure" to absurd standards of security. We have reached in Israel a point where no food prepared at home reaches the standards of the Ministry of Health. Also the composition of domestic sewage (yours, mine) would never be acceptable in a factory or restaurant that is being tested. There is no limit to "purity" because the public is crazy with fear and the ministry is forced to show action and accept no compromise when public health is in the balance. The louder the "tykoonim" (Israeli slang for entrepreneurs, such as restaurant owners) and the "elita" (Israeli slang for Ashkenazi middle class) protest and shout, better for the bureaucrats, more visible is that they are doing their job.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The question is whether these inefficiencies are a manifestation of a society that is rich and secure, or one that is dangerously wasting its resources.

Anon.

J said...

I am inclined to think it is society in search of inexistent security.