29 Sep 2006

Appalling!

Posted in News, Rants at 11:22 am by alby

I read bits of the new Private Eye yesterday.  Good heavens it sent my BP rocketing.

Here are 2 times that doctors were sued:

1 – Dr supplies wrong drug and poisons his patient.

2 – Dr tells smoking, very recently pregnant woman (who didn’t stop smoking when pregnant) “You’ve seen your daughter born, if you want to see her get married you might want to stop smoking”.

One of these patients got £28000 and the other got £44000.  Can you tell which got what? 

In any case the dr in the second one was doing his job.  I’m livid about this. 

I feel the need to write to someone!

Any ideas who?

Have fun.

26 Sep 2006

Radio Hype?

Posted in News at 7:53 pm by alby

I was listening to Radio 5 this afternoon and one of the most extraordinary exchanges between interviewer and -ee was on.

The presenters were talking with Alistair Campbell.  The first presenter mentioned that after the love-in going on at the Labour party convention they were receiving plenty of emails stating that Britain isn’t the utopia that TBlair was saying.  Instead of stating some positives all Campbell did was to whinge that the people who sent the mails were either young conservatives or that the presenters had made them up.  How very bizarre.

But then it got weirder.  The other presenter butted in and said that Campbell was being rather aggressive (he was) and that there is a great malaise in Labour which was evidenced by the speech by Gordon Brown being overshadowed by what Blair’s missus was supposed to have said or not.  The presenter said something like “It doesn’t matter if she did or didn’t say it”. And Campbell was off: “How can a BBC presenter say somehing like that?  Of course it matters if she didn’t say it…” blah blah.  What he actually meant was “It was irrelevant what she said because everyone is reporting it as fact now.”

It was an appalling blunder on the part of the presenter who’s usually a safe bet for a good interview.  It wasn’t helped by Campbell’s belligerence either.  Anyway the interview was cut short because it wasn’t getting anywhere after this point.

But was Campbell justfied in his anger?  I reckon he is to a degree.  The story that Cherie said “Liar” when Brown was talking is good political soap opera but probably wasn’t really true.  But all the papers ran it either as fact or “well she probably didn’t say it but she believes it”.  It was a good speech (except the now-standard Arctic Monkeys reference – wait for Cameron’s Arctic Monkey name check next week) and a crappy personality clash seems to have overshadowed it.

Is this “gossip over substance” what turns people off politics?  And why do people blame the politicans for this? This has clearly been a case of the media getting over-excited.

Have fun.

Bulgarian problems

Posted in Bulgaria, Rants at 7:37 pm by alby

Arse!  Just had news that the drop-out son of the people who sold us the house is living in the property now.  We haven’t given permission, nor has anyone informed us officially.  K’s mum found out via village gossip.  What can we do?

I don’t know.  She’s off to insure the house against damage tomorrow and to confront them this weekend.  K’s worried she might get beaten up by him.  Thankfully she’s off with our fixer Tzetzkin as back up.  Second worry is that he’ll come back and torch the place after he’s been kicked out.  Police are no use, security firms won’t cover it to the extent that we need as it’s too rural.  We really need someone in the place looking after it full time.

I’m seriously pissed off with our vendors as they still assume the place is theirs; at least they re acting like it.  Last time I went their car was in our garage (after their son broke one of its windows in anger). They also turn up to say hello whenever anyone is in the place. And now their idiot, drunkard and stoned vicious git of a son feels like he can stay there free of rent.

I wonder if we can get someone to break his legs for us (or at least threaten it).

Have fun.

25 Sep 2006

Whisper it…

Posted in News at 11:25 am by alby

…quietly.

We haven’t heard our lovely neighbour for days.  We think they might have moved out.  I hope I haven’t now jinxed us.

Have fun.

Dangerous owners

Posted in News at 9:09 am by alby

Well this is a first.  A local story goes national.  In fact a very local story.  You may of heard about the 2 rottweilers killing a 5 month old baby in Leicester a couple of days ago.  For those of you wot missed it here’s a link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/5375520.stm

This is (would be) my local pub were I ever to visit it.  There are none anywhere nearer.  What to tell you about it?

It’s the sort of place you wouldn’t ever wish to visit if you value your life and/or health.  The clientele are the chavvy New Parks set and as such to be avoided.  Whenever I’ve gone past the place you can see the 2 rottweilers pacing around on top of the flat bit of roof and they were a nasty pair of animals.  I wouldn’t have risked my own life by going anywhere near them but for some reason this couple left their 5 month old child in the same room as the dogs. 

I don’t know the parents but I can imagine, as I’m sure many could, that they’re probably not the most wholesome pair of middle class parents.  They’ve probably not got a whole lot going on upstairs neither.  Just desserts?  No, not really.  That’s not my point.

A phone-in on 5-live last night was doing a “should we ban rottweilers” topic and sensible people saying “Dogs are fine if you train them properly” were being drowned out by knee-jerk reactionaries stating that all dogs should be muzzled and/or put-down depending on breed.

“A child has died!!!” they scream.  Oh right so that means everyone else has to suffer does it?  Cars kill between 6-9 people daily in this country but I don’t hear these idiots clamouring for the wholesale banning of cars.  Why not?  Probably because they’ve got a car and don’t want to lose it.  But they don’t have dogs, therefore after this case all dogs are evil.

It does come down to the owners and how they train and treat the dog.  The kids parents weren’t the owners of the dogs but were part of the family so should have known the risks of having 2 huge mutts trained to kill in the house. 

There is no change in rules necessary apart from maybe insisting on licences to be obtained before being able to breed and I don’t think a dog licencing scheme is a particularly bad idea either.

Have fun.

20 Sep 2006

Ooh bugger

Posted in News at 8:49 pm by alby

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/5365676.stm

Sigh.

[edit 22/9]

The Beeb website has this marvellous piece of journalism about this on it:

Doctors continue to monitor the condition of Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond following a high-speed crash.

Really?

Paranoia

Posted in News, Reviews at 9:01 am by alby

It’s an omnipresent thing.

2 things brought home to me how much paranoia plays a part in life.

First was president Ahmadinajad of Iran who was talking about how the west keeps control of its population by fear and stifling free thought and discussion of ideas.  In one way he has a point as we can’t do stuff like deny the holocaust but the flipside is  “WTF?”  This from a guy whose own country is ruled by clerics who are allergic to free thought and anyone disagreeing can be in severe trouble.  Kettle meet pot.

Second was the show that Stephen Fry did last night re his bi-polar disorder.  It was a revealing look at someone who has a diagnosis looking back at before his diagnosis and seeing the pattern.  The problem is that it’s so easy to believe that you fit the pattern too.  I’ve had some manic times followed by crashing pits of despair but am I bi-polar?  I seriously doubt it.  I worry how many folk will have watched the show and projected the symptoms onto their normal life and found that 2 and 2 make 5.

The show itself was well made but not without its problems.  First was the selection of most of the interviewees.  They were mainly rich and/or famous which tended to leave the less sympathetic with the thought that these were privileged folk with no real negatives airing their angst for no good purpose.  I don’t agree.  If the celebs weren’t there then no-one would have watched.  Other people in the show were “normal” people with no pretensions to luvviedom.  An excellent show and there’s another half next week.

Have fun.

18 Sep 2006

In with the new

Posted in Blog at 7:48 pm by alby

Here it is then.  First entry int’ new blog on my own webspace.  The whole thing should grow soon enough and I’ll put all the PhysioMonkey stuff into a seperate subdomain and more exciting things too.

This is basically a test bed for my professional site for me and K.  It gives me a chance to try things in a friendly environment.

Comments are open for criticism and/or ideas.

Have fun.