It was the loom bands that did it.

Right through 2014 we've been bombarded in the newspapers, on TV and radio and on the internet with reports that tell us - well, basically, whatever we do is wrong and the state we're in is all our own fault.

So 4 out of 10 cases of cancer could be avoided if we had a good diet, avoided alcohol/sex/the sun, took exercise and, as far as I can see, had no fun at all. (This is the opposite of the ideal life a friend of mine recommends: live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse. I know which I find more attractive.)

It seems we're only safe if we drink two glasses of red wine a few times a week. No, according to another researcher, a bottle a day will do us no harm.

Smoking is very bad for us, but now it seems the electronic fags, which I thought were a great way to help people struggling to quit smoking, may also be dangerous.

We need to exercise 3 or 4 times a week. But some other expert says just imagining ourselves exercising will help us keep fit and stave off the dreaded obesity (A much misused word which is only attractive to newsreaders because of the disapproving hiss they can get into saying it.)

But it was the loom bands that finished me off. They are dangerous apparently. A wee pastime enjoyed by many boys and girls and some adults and it's bad for you. I didn't read beyond the headline so I don't know why. I do know what my reaction was.

First I thought: Must be a slow news day. And then: did somebody get a research grant for that?

And finally I said out loud: Opissoff!

And I've decided Opissoff is going to be my reaction to every scare and rumour from now on. I urge you to join me, especially women, who are constantly bombarded with every kind of nonsense. So much so that many women now go through life in a cloud of guilt, constantly on a diet,  hair so fiercely straightened it'll probably fall out by the time they're 40, and tanked up on botox. (I watched Eve Pollard on the Sky News Review last night. Do you know her face never moved once in 30 minutes.)

The kind of health news I want in 2015 is more about how attaching a wee machine to the vagus nerve can control diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. Now there's news worth having.

Tesco - not helping, not even a little bit!

I like Giraffe. There's one of their restaurants in Heathrow Airport and it always strikes me as a haven of sanity and decent food at reasonable prices. They do good fresh salads, quality coffee and smoothies. The service is efficient and it is always busy.

Tesco bought the Giraffe chain last year and have opened a Giraffe in Silverburn, attached to their store. It was reviewed in Saturday's Herald and a terrible review it is too. Nothing - service, food, atmosphere - got good marks. The food earned 2 points out of 5. The dishes ordered didn't contain the fancy ingredients the posh menu said they would. One dish even contained what looked like tomato ketchup. 

The Silverburn Giraffe is close to a Nando's. On the day the reviewer visited, Nando's was full and Giraffe mostly empty. It's just along from Wagamama and I'll bet that was quite lively too. There's also a 'handmade burger' place in that group of restaurants. These are all chains. They operate the same menu in every branch. Their food and service are quality-controlled. They all charge the same prices almost to within a pound of each other.

The Giraffe prices are higher than any of these. 

I know little about the restaurant business - or the supermarket business, come to that, except as a customer. But I've got a few questions:

Why did Tesco decide to get into the restaurant business? And why now? For decades, those of us who work in the public sector have been urged to look at how things are done in the private sector because the private sector does things so much better. But even I can see the flaws in Tesco's decision to diversify by buying a restaurant chain, an area they have no experience in, when they are already struggling to hold their own in the supermarket business - which they do or should know about - against Lidl, Aldi and Home Bargains. The old adage 'stick to what you know' comes to mind. 

And who did the market research before the restaurant opened in Silverburn? A quick swatch (as we say in Glasgow) at the menus of nearby restaurants would give you an idea of (1) how much competition you're going to have; (2) what you can charge if you're going to compete with them; and (3) the blindingly bleedin obvious fact that you need a unique selling point. 

Nando's is Thai/Chinese fusion and offers mainly chicken dishes. Not to my taste, since I reckon peri-peri sauce is mostly used to disguise the fact that chicken these days has no taste. Wagamama is Japanese/Chinese fusion and has the added excitement of chopsticks, which I've never got the hang of myself but I can see young people love them. My sister and I love the Wagmama spicy noodles and chicken but I doubt if any of the men in my family would eat there more than once. They'd be next door wrapping their gnashers round a handmade burger. 

I'm not sure what the unique selling-point of Giraffe at Silverburn is meant to be. I hope Tesco either get these restaurants right or get them sold to people who know what they're doing. 

Here's to Eòrpa

Eòrpa

If it wasn't for Eòrpa (Alba and BBC2), I would have no idea what's happening in the rest of Europe. 

For example, did you know that Germany gets 25% of its electricity by burning 'brown coal' - that is, lignite? This is the most polluting of the fossil fuels. Not content with being filthy and dangerous to human health and the environment, burning lignite pours arsenic into the atmosphere and shares it with Germany's neighbours - and that includes us, just across the North Sea. And the Germans have loads of it. As they turn away from nuclear power, Germans need a fuel supply that will be cheap to produce (lignite comes from open cast mines rather than deep mines so that ticks that box) and cheap to burn (keeping consumers' bills down - another box ticked with lignite). And they're willing to do a lot to get it. 

Most of Germany's brown coal is in the former East Germany and the German government is prepared to dump the health and well-being of local residents to keep the lights on in the west and, to quote one official from a local town hall, to 'keep industry running.' 

Perhaps the most alarming part of Germany's brown coal story is the way mining companies have dismantled whole villages to get at it, moving populations to new locations and effectively destroying their way of life. A lot of the people caught up in this are Sorbs. They are Germans but from a Slav background. They have their own language and culture and are, like many minority groups across Europe, under threat. When their villages are moved, some Sorbish inhabitants decide to go elsewhere. Then there aren't enough children to keep the village school open, the local shop closes, and in a short time what was a healthy wee community falls apart. The Sorbs are used to being at worst badly treated and at best ignored but now, having tried keeping quiet in the hope no one would bother them, they've summoned up their courage and are challenging both the mining companies and the German government. 

I wish the Sorbs good luck. They have everything on their side: the European Convention on Human Rights, the World Health Organisation, Greenpeace - and surely every right-minded  person in every community in the EU. But I wouldn't count on their local politicians backing them up: the local mayors want funding from the Land and from the federal German government, so they're playing the collaboration game. 

I saw all this in - I think - programme 3 or 4 of this season's Eòrpa. Eòrpa has the luxury of being able to devote 15 minutes to a story and really drill down to get the facts. It's worth a look on BBC iPlayer.