Category Archives: random rants

by | May 5, 2010 · 7:00 am

more fun with the national health service

I had to go over to my local health centre last week for a periodic check up. As I’m getting closer to three score years it’s good to keep a check on how the old body is doing, and I’m pleased to say that it’s not too bad at all. A couple of things I need to watch, but I’m doing better than maybe they thought, and this is the issue. I knew that I was doing better than the numbers that they told me I needed to be around because I had the same set of blood tests a couple of months ago at the hospital.

Bearing in mind that we are talking about two establishments both part of the Swindon NHS trust and barely two miles away from each other as the crow flies why is the information not shared?

How much time was wasted on two appointments for the tests, two more appointments for the results, two sets of postage to send the samples plus all of the consumables involved, two lots of tests?

I know the anti big brother mob are rabidly against centralising information, but this is an area where surely it would have made sense to have made the first test results available to my general practioner’s office? With all the waste in costs why oh why does this sort of thing go on?

When I had the first of the two operations at the NHS hospital I signed a form and that released all of my notes and test results from the private hospital that I had seen previously about that health issue, so if we can swap data between the private and public services, why can’t two parts of the same public service do the same?

What saddens me most is that money and time has ben wasted on me that could have benefited somone who really needed it. This government has done so much damage to the NHS it is hard to believe that it was a Labour party idea in the first place.

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by | April 17, 2010 · 8:10 pm

fun with words number 78 – more media mayhem

Sat with the Wokingham Wonder having dinner tonight my reverie was broken by the link announcer on TV telling us that there was to be a programme on the Worst Serial Killers; the ones that were able to kill and kill before finally being tracked down by the police.

What? The worst serial killers? Surely the ones that got away with it enough to become serial killers were the ones that were good at it? On that basis should it not be the Best Serial Killers? The worst ones might not even have managed to kill anyone.

Once again I know what they meant to say, and probably so did pretty much everyone else, so what does it matter? Well, for me, it is yet another example of sloppy speaking which, from the media, is pretty much criminal. The most notorious serial killers would have worked, so why not say that?

As they murder the language with such frequency, will they be featured in the programme?

Oh well. They’ve come with my medication again, I’ll have to go.

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by | April 7, 2010 · 7:06 am

is there going to be an election then?

Haven’t we had one or two of these before? I’m sure that I remember several over the 57 and a bit years that I’ve been on the planet.

So why did the BBC extend its lunchtime bulletin to rabbit on over and over about the PM going to see the queen ad nauseum? After about the fourth time that they told us how he’d driven to the palace and back etc etc, what the other two leaders (sorry, can’t remember their names at the moment) had done and so on I was at screaming point.

Yes he’s called an election: So what? We all knew it was going to happen. We all knew when the date was. So what was newsworthy? Just a quick confirmation would have been enough; less than a dozen words. But no, we have to have the expense of goodness knows how many people out on outside broadcasts and spouting meaningless twaddle on the subject just so they had something to say. At least, in the bit I did watch (in the forlorn hope that they’d get round to Bargain Hunt), they didn’t mention the respective wives.

It isn’t a momentous event, it’s a routine proceess and it happens every 5 years or so. If I was the Queen I’d have left a note on the gate saying “Yes, I’ve heard. Just get on with it” and not bothered to see the oaf at all.

Clegg and Cgmeron; there, I’ve remembered. This is the problem for me; they are all a bunch of faceless nonentities these days and therefore I have little to get enthused about. The current lot have systematically destroyed the country I used to be proud of and to a point that I don’t hold much hope of the others being able to do much to restore things assuming that they get the chance.

Oh well. Life will go on regardless and I will be watching even less TV than usual. A good book, some music or a good conversation are much better ways of spending the time. Roll on the middle of May when it will all be over.

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by | March 6, 2010 · 8:38 pm

the joys of shopping #1

A new theme of blogs, this time on the joys of shopping. Now please treat these rants with an element of tongue in cheek but, as a grumpy old man, these are all things that annoy me to some degree. I’ve blogged elsewhere about standards (“Why bother? No-one else does.” on another of my blogs), and whether I’m right or wrong, this is how I feel.

To set the scene, I’m in a store on a retail park on the edge of town. As I wander around the aisles Elvis begins to croon “Love me tender, love me tr” bing bong “ Will Alan Smith please come to the back door, Alan Smith to the back door”, “’reams come true” etc. You get the picture? Now Love Me Tender is not, by a long chalk, my favourite Elvis song, but this is close to sacrilege and I start getting these urges to campaign for reinstatement of capital punishment. It’s the same with those idiot DJs who talk over the music; if you’re going to play a song wait until it’s finished before inflicting your banal chatter on your audience.

This especially true when I’m out food shopping with the Wonder of Wokingham and we are deep in meaningful conversation about what we’re going to eat when some oik with no idea of manners will interrupt us with some meaningless, to us, announcement or other. If they want Mary Smith to report to the checkout captain, or some such instruction, and are prepared to interrupt the customers with this request, the surely we should be told why? “Will Mary Smith please report to the checkout captain to be shot for interrupting Elvis” does at least give us some explanation as to why we have been so rudely interrupted even if it does not excuse them having done so.

More joys of shopping another time perhaps.

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by | March 5, 2010 · 9:41 pm

radio too?

A funny thing happened today. I had a loan car from the garage and, on starting the engine, the radio came on. Now I don’t have the car radio on much these days. Maybe just a little Classic FM perhaps, but most of the time I’d rather listen to my own CDs or a talking book as radio has just become abysmal. However, the programme wasn’t too bad and, with it being a strange car and in traffic, I was too preoccupied with avoiding all the would be assassins with whom I was sharing the road and who were trying to kill me to hunt around for the off button.

Then came the funny thing. It was Radio 2 and the Chris Evans show, except that it wasn’t the poisonous carrot, but a stand in who appeared to be actually capable of stringing a sentence together and at reasonable volume. I was so impressed I left it on for the rest of the drive to the office.

Now I was never a Wogan fan, but at least I could tune him out and that just isn’t possible with the shrieking Evans. If ever there was someone who should never have been let loose with a microphone it is him. Rumours that he might replace AC one the One Show, even if just on Friday’s, is enough to ensure I shall turn the TV off for the duration.

Come on BBC. You can make quality programmes like the recent Indian Hill Railways series and you appear to have finally arranged to get rid of that talentless abomination Ross, so do the decent thing and get shot of Evans as well. On the other hand, I do at least know where the off switch is, so I shall just continue to use that to spare myself.

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by | March 2, 2010 · 10:21 pm

live election debates on tv

Well, ours is one household where we’ll either be trying to find something else to watch or just turn it off and find something else to do.

There is so little of any merit on TV these days so why oh why do we have to put up with this nonsense? Will it influence my vote? Not in the slightest.

In my opinion these debates have as much to do with politics as professional wrestling does to sport. I would take away the right to vote from anyone who things that their vote is swayed by this sort of nonsense.

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by | February 28, 2010 · 8:19 am

is nature out of control? no, the media can’t use their language

I’ve just read that statement on a news channel talking about the earthquake in Chile and the possibility of a resultant tsunami in the Pacific.

What a stupid statement; when was nature ever under control? Nature is nature. It’s part of the life we live in sharing this planet and every now and again it will bite us. Of course I’m sorry that people have lost relatives, homes, property or whatever when we have these disasters, but this post isn’t about that.

It’s about the stupid things that the media say. A personal peeve has long been the soccer writer or commentator who says that such and such team were saved by the woodwork/crossbar/post. Now I’ve played, watched or refereed hundreds of games and have never seen the woodwork move to save a shot. If the ball hits the woodwork and goes wide or back into play then the shot wasn’t quite on target. Saved by the woodwork is a stupid thing to say.

Another one that has been prevalent of late is that someone has died in Afghanistan after being hit by a mine. No they weren’t hit by a mine; their vehicle drove over one. It’s of no consolation either way to those killed or maimed and their families, but can’t the media show some respect by reporting accurately?

Another of my blogs will, on Monday next, be critical of education standards, but what chance have folks got when the media, hugely influential as they are, can’t get it right?

Somewhere along the way the news went into the entertainment business. I can’t quite work out when, but standards went South with the change. I started to realise it had happened when it dawned on me that news bulletins had started to refer to TV programmes, the bulletin effectively promoting the channels own entertainment programmes. I can rarely sit through a news bulletin these days, and don’t often read a newspaper cover to cover any more. The standards or reporting and use of words irritates me so much that the topic gets lost.

Another example of getting old? Just a grumpy old man moaning about how it wasn’t like that in my day? Maybe, but something well written, whether for reading yourself or having it read to you, is a joy. Our language allows great expression and should be used to good effect. Why waste it?

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