31 May 2009
Fam trip
Spent some time with the folks this weekend.
Photos here.
30 May 2009
Idiot politics
And I don’t mean the politicians (although that’s conceivable too).
More the current ongoing public response to this ever so tedious public feeding frenzy about expenses.
Firstly, just how trivial is this news? The money involved is trifling, yes sort it out but do it and shut up. I hate to break it to the public of GB but we DO need politicians. We DON’T need public votes on everything. For heaven’s sake the public think Susan Boyle is worth voting as the most talented person in the UK. That should instantly disqualify those particular voters from having any say whatsoever on any substantive issues.
Can you imagine the chaos of a government actually led by the will of the people? The idiotic masses who thought that Princess Di was their closest and dearest friend and wept and wailed like Americans after being told to eat less cake? World War 3 would begin in no time. Civil strife would multiply and stupid petty idiootic concerns about personal life would rule all.
I can’t imagine a more horrific UK than one actually run by the voters.
Ok the MPs are idiots too. Some should maybe resign.
But ah, should they?
OK let’s look at the detail.
Let’s look at Elliott Morley eh? He used to be my MP. He claimed for a mortgage that he had already paid off. He’s resigning at the next election after years of public service as a local MP and junior minister. Years of poitical experience. Now I have no idea what the guy’s like, I don’t know him or any detail of his political views. BUT I’d rather he had a say than people who think McDonald’s is a fine place to “treat” their kids (but that’s another rant for another day).
According to the news he Mr Morley claimed £16000 over 18 months.
For this he may be investigated by the police/fraud squad. He’s resigning in a year or so too. I think that’s plenty don’t you?
Apparently many don’t think so.
Anger is such a stupid reason to do anything, see North Korea for a good example of what happens when you put angry idiots in charge.
So £16000. A decent amount of cash no? If he stays another year he’ll get let’s say another £60k or so in salary (as a backbencher).
Loads of people, in constituencies around the country, are demanding by-elections now. Again, anger – not a good reason to act!
So why is this a bad thing?
Well how much do you think a by-election will cost? Hm?
According to one report, about £200000 for a typical seat. So 3 times the amount.
To put a less experienced person in parliament. For a year. Only to repeat the process again in a year at the same cost again.
So if you want your anger to insist we have worse representation by less experienced people for a pointless amount of time for a large amount of money more, then I consider that counts as an idiotic viewpoint and you are clearly an idiot. The phrase “cutting your nose off to spite your face” was tailor made for idiots like you.
And if the people if the constituencies of those MPs who haven’t put in any dodgy expenses (shock horror, yes there are some, plenty in fact, shock horror again – but where do we hear of them? The Telegraph’s web page for instance has no link showing the clean MPs – but we wouldn’t expect the media to be fair now would we?) are also calling for those MPs to be put up for election then you sirs are even deeper fwits and deserve nothing but utter contempt heaped upon you. Nothing more prone to provoke a response of “you Joey” than the retards’ rallying cry of “They’re all the same – only in it for the trough”. Oh do shut the fup. Tedious, erroneus and only shows you up as a know nothing imbecile.
On a slightly different note. UK MPs even with these issues are still better than most politicians around the world. For instance did you know that MPs in Bulgaria and Russia (and probly others) are immune from prosecution from anything? Yes you read that correctly. MPs in these countries can murder, steal, defraud and so on with no official sanction and no legal recourse. I wonder if those MPs wangle their expenses as well.
People around the world are laughing at the pathetic inanity of our complaints re MPs.
Sort it out.
PS Have a look here.
There’s lots of MP’s names there. Therefore there’s loads of dodginess right?
Well for instance:
“Peter Ainsworth tried to charge nearly £1,000 for a “pewter finish” radiator cover on his expenses and was warned by the fees office that it could be excessive”
Ooh the viscious grasping soul. And horrifying to see that the parliamentary office allowed it….oh!
or
“Danny Alexander claimed £2,000 for work on kitchen and £2,000 for sofa and chairs. Also received £1,140 for the cost of alcoves, shelving and a desk for flat”
Oh no! He had some kitchen work done! Can anyone come up with any argument that this is excessive? In London? My windows in Leics were that much. And do we really want him to sit on the floor? Yes you can get cheaper furniture but it’s hardly excessive is it?
Buried deep in the article is
“Richard Benyon did not claim on his second homes allowance in 2007/08″
Not highlit at all.
Sigh.
28 May 2009
How to waste money
Had a patient this week with summat known as “ITB syndrome“.
She’s a runner and had had the pain for a while and whilst waiting for us she’d been to see a private physio.
Now then. There are certain things you’d expect to see in an ITB presentation. She had ALL of them.
Her hips were mildly rotated inwards, she had weak glutes, her feet flicked slightly outwards as she walked and ran, her adductors were overactive and on and on.
So solution is to change all of this by strengthening up some muscles and looking at gait and so on.
Not a quick fix but it works and is long lasting.
Her private physio mind you. Ooh this annoys me.
He did 8 sessions of ultrasound. And that was it.
Utter waste of time and money for her. Makes me so angry.
Sort the problem out rather than “try to tweak the symptoms” maybe.
Still 8 sessions of US would have netted him around £200-250, nice pay for doing nothing.
25 May 2009
We know a horse
Back from Bungay. Not only the most chilled event of the year but also the least juggly. My record was soundly thrashed this year with a grand total of no juggling done at all.
I was there a day later than I’d have liked what with screwing up my work diary somewhat. No matter, I arrived just in time to bid DB farewell as he and others were off away to the Dutch convention. Oh and I completely missed D as he’d zoomed off to drive a lorry containing 2 passengers to Nice for the Monaco GP.
Once set up I was there to sit and chill. So I did.
It was probably the most necessary thing to do. Work and life has been hectic so a half week or so of nothing was just the ticket.
Chatted to a goodly number of people, met new folk, chatted to pals, drank a bit, played games and napped.
Ate some decent grub too. The cafe had started doing omnivorous stuff this year but I failed to have any as the one time I tried they’d run out before I got to the front of the queue. The vegan thing I had was pretty good though so I’m not complaining.
The only food missing was that I didn’t get to the pub as per usual.
The weather was lovely with only one short burst of rain whilst I was there and that was whilst I was napping.
The show was very much a thrown together affair but that’s another thing that makes Bungay different. (Belgian) Martin rocked as usual and Pretentious Ken made the tent laugh heartily. A good evening followed by drunken games – Mandy and Alex deserve a mention for being so entertaining whilst a “bit tiddly”.
The drive home was a real pain though. Lovely people to miss and it’s a long way. Sigh.
Will miss it until next year.
Photos here.
19 May 2009
The Fall and Rise of Alby
Well what a day!
Tuesdays are a long day for me at work. Start at 8 and finish at 5.30 with 30mins for lunch. Doesn’t sound too bad but when the diary is full it makes for a hectic time.
More so today as I’ve loads to do before tomorrow. Student diary to organise. Work out who’s going to have to have time booked off when for student supervision purposes. Letters that need to go out today, referrals to go through (which ones need to be urgent etc), dealing with late patients and problems of other staff. Oh yes and there was no receptionist today either. This means that if a patient is late then there’s no-one handy to let me know. This means multiple trips to the waiting area, just to check they’re not late.
Patients are allowed 10 mins before we can say we’re not going to see them.
So why, on the busiest days, does everyone show up 9 mins late?
It means there’s less time to see them, because of the 3 or so trips to the waiting area there’s been no time to do any of the other jobs I need to do either.
And that was me today. All day! Just hectic.
Failed to get a load of letters done and no time tomorrow either. Grr, they’ll have to wait until Tuesday (when naturally I have a full diary again so still may not have any time).
So that was the “fall”.
Got home to find that my dad has decided to get a new car; which means I get first dibs on his old one. Newer and comfier and more reliable than my current one. Huzzah.
Oh and I got my certificate from the Pilates people. I am now a qualified Pilates trainer. Whoot!
And an 80% on the exam (a mainly subjective exam it should be noted) and my droppy area was “you need to practice the movements a little more” so I can demo them better. But I sort of knew that one. Oh and apparently I “need to highlight positives as well as negatives”. Me negative and picky? As if.
A better end than beginning to the day.
18 May 2009
All ages are good ages
So what’s been going on?
Had my birthday last week, harumph.
Had a couple of very nice meals out too. Thai at a place in Loughborough and an extremely nice steak somewhere north of Loughb. Thanks to Nicky for both of those tips.
Work’s been busy as usual.
Not really very exciting no.
News: Politicians fail to live up the high expectations we’ve always had of them (sarcasm assumed). Public whinge as if they’re surprised and they can’t believe it. People really do seem to innoculate themselves against reality don’t they?
Seen a couple of good progs on tellybox too.
The best one was some wotsit about the journey of the human species out of Africa and into the rest of the world. Am surprised that no-one has whinged publically that it’s all rubbish as the world is only 6000 years old and we were created as we are now anyway.
But there’s been some intriguing stuff. We left Africa via the Red Sea. It’s reckoned that this happened at a time when sea levels fell. Anyone else think there’s a possibility that the parting of the Red Sea myth from the Old Testament might be an ancient race memory thing?
And the Chinese – lawd bless em. They’re taught in school that they look different because they are special. The theory was that they grew from homo erectus. The evidence is scanty and the look of disappointment on the researcher’s face as he related discovering via genetics that this is baloney was priceless.
I do wonder why the need to specify a uniqueness. Isn’t their history and culture and land enough? Why do people need to be “better” than anyone else? I just can’t understand that drive.
Oh and just been watching “Yes Minister” again. It really is very good.
06 May 2009
Pointless
I was sent another link at work today. It’s one of those “10 things” things where some under-employed journo has to come up with something to fill some pages up.
Anyway; it’s “10 pointless things“. One might argue that the article itself would count, but apparently not.
Now there’s some plenty banal rubbish on it (the pic of the male swan chorus on point 1 was a surprise though) but number 2 is rather intriguing.
Unicycle: As its name suggests, a unicycle is similar to a bicycle but it only has one wheel. The effects of removing a wheel are all negative. Balancing on a unicycle requires much more effort and leads to a much greater likelihood of falling off. Taking away a wheel is also much slower. The maximum speed reached on a unicycle is approximately 35 km/h (22 mph), while Chris Hoy (pictured above) has reached speeds of 70 km/h (40 mph) on his bicycle.
Now I’m no unicyclist but there does seem to be a lot of wrongness in there.
I know this is a light-hearted attempt at filling in dull days in dull office jobs but there’s some good points here.
“The effects of removing a wheel are all negative” eh? Not sure I’d agree.
One of my main contentions re the world is that stuff should be fun. Unicycling ticks that box for plenty of people, hence not useless.
Secondly, why measure such a random thing as speed as a measure of usefulness? In that case a transit van is more pointless than a Ferrari, after all it would be “much slower”. NB the claimed “40mph” is pretty far short of top speed on a bike anyway.
But what else is useful re unicycling?
As I can testify (and Clurb can corroborate), unicycling is much harder work (at least at first). They even mention this but apparently miss the significance of it. It gives you a harder workout, it works your core stability muscles, it helps your balance. All rather useful things from my work point of view. There was even a “unicycling for back pain” article in one of the charity publications from Back Care.
Not sure they thoroughly thought this one through.
Either that or they couldn’t be bothered either because they’re lazy or the article really didn’t need to be particularly thought through.
05 May 2009
Simple?
I saw a magic link today. Not sure I agree with its title though.
“25 Simple Habits That Make a Surprisingly Big Difference In Your Health”
We’ll have to ignore the poor grammar.
So what simple things will make a big difference?
The very first one is “exercise”. Ah right. They seem to be under the illusion that exercising more is in some way “easy”.
But oh no. Further down the list we get to:
“Don’t eat before bedtime”. How far before? Hours? Could be tricky.
Is nice to see “wear sunscreen” down there tho’.
But the whammy is “quit smoking”.
I really can’t believe they consider that “easy”. EH?