27 Aug 2010
Posted in Life, Rants at 2:18 pm by alby
The flat roof of my place has been a pain in the proverbial for some time. I think it started when some kids found a way to sit on it to natter. Alternatively it could simply have been wear and tear. I’ve been at the place for 8 years or so and the roof hasn’t been maintained at all in that time. So now it leaks – quite a bit.
I spoke to a company to come and estimate me a repair job. They dutifully did and wrote me a detailed plan and costing for the job.
I phone them up and said please do come and sort it.
The woman on the other end of the phone said. “Oh you need to sign the form that came with the letter and send it in.”
Can I find the letter? Well what do you think?
So my roof is still leaking.
Got to R’s place yesterday after work to discover a minor flappage ongoing as water was now dripping into her bedroom. Thankfully small amounts though considering how heavy and persistent the rain was yesterday.
She phoned the landlords who said it wasn’t urgent. Oh really?! Not urgent that there’s potentially a hole in the roof letting in water. I suppose you could argue that it’s unlikely to ever rain in the UK so there’s no hurry.
Oh wait a minute….No you can’t!
Grr.
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18 Aug 2010
Posted in Rants, Work at 4:28 pm by alby
At work we occasionally (sometimes often) have to use interpreters with our patients.
The commonest languages (Gujurati, Punjabi etc) are supported by a partner organisation. They’re very good.
For those languages that they don’t cover we use the local city council’s interpreting service. The interpreters again are usually very good.
With both sets of staff we have to fill in a form for them to take back to the office. This lets the office know that they turned up on time and did their job well etc.
Now the council staff have a set of questions including this one:
Are you aware of the council’s interpreting service?
This might be a good question if you were asking it to a random person with no need of an interpreting service.
However, I’ve just spent any amount of time up to an hour or so with a patient and one of your interpreters! So what do you think I’m going to answer to that stupid question? It’s one of your interpreters who’s handing me the form with the question on it!
If anyone can think of anything witty and erudite that won’t get me sacked that I can write in answer to that next time I’ll be much obliged.
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26 Feb 2010
Posted in Life, News, Rants at 5:23 pm by alby
I’ve just sent off for my first DAB radio.
This is the one wot I ordered: here. To replace the ancient midi system I have had in my middle room for years which only seems to work with AM radio now.
Nice features, great reviews, swanky bit of kit. Thank you very much.
But then the problems start:
First of all I get a delivery card through my door (from “Home Delivery Network”). Not too surprising seeing as I “work” n’all. The delivery co say go their website and pick a different day for delivery. OK no problem.
Oh but they only do Mon-Fri delivery. So that’s useful then what with me, you know, “working”.
No matter I am at home for at least an afternoon a week. Ah that’s not helpful their delivery slots are “7am -7pm”. In other words if I want them to do their job (IE deliver me something they’ve been paid to deliver to me) I must take a day off work.
I wouldn’t trust any of the neighbours round here and there’s no “safe place” for the driver to leave it.
I have another option which is to pick it up from their depot. In Nottingham. Thanks very much. I may as well have just bloody driven down to Amazon’s warehouse in Milton Keynes and not bothered with the delivery.
Doesn’t all of this screw around with the whole bloody point of mail order service? You know, the whole “not having to go and pick it up” thing?
I wrote a very grumpy email to Amazon who, to be fair, did respond quickly but then used the line
“Currently, we do not have the ability to assign certain carriers to a specific customer or address”
What? I find this astonishing if true. They’re the ones who pay the carrying company. But they can’t specify which carrier takes which order? I’m nearly speechless.
I’ve ordered plenty of things from them before and have had to pick orders up which have been unable to be delivered but these items end up in the central post office in the centre of town. So why the hell does this one have to be a: given to a company that is unable to do the job they’ve been employed to do, b: unable to be given to a carrier that actually IS able to do the job or at least will get it to within a couple of miles of my house and c: this snazzy wotsit I’m actually really looking forward to playing with and getting use out of?
Bloody hell!
And just to cap this annoying little episode one of the main reasons I bought a DAB radio was to listen to 6music which looks like it may well be being got rid of in the next round of BBC cuts. Yes that’s right one of few stations on the BBC that actually looks after their public service remit is being cut whilst BBC3 isn’t, BBC1 remains appalling, BBC2 is a pale shadow of what it once was and only BBC4 is showing much of what they should be producing and showing us (and isn’t safe from the chop either).
Bad mood day today.
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15 Feb 2010
Posted in News, People, Rants at 2:11 pm by alby
Apparently the truth can be decided upon by sheer popularity. I knew this happened in the past (see religion for details) but surely now we actually know some stuff.
From a letter in the local rag from an MEP no less:
I may sometimes take a nuanced view, for example on climate, I am at least in line with public opinion.
A recent BBC poll showed that after the scandals around the Climate Research Unit and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, only 26% of voters still believe in man-made global warming.
Ah so that’s alright then. Lots of people don’t believe it therefore it’s not happening. Glad to see we sorted out the whole ecogeddon thing simply by closing our eyes and singing la la la.
At least it’s someone I now know not to vote for. Idiot.
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01 Feb 2010
Posted in News, Rants at 1:59 pm by alby
Seems this anti-homeopathy protest (10:23) has confused an awfy lot of folk.
Naysayers re hom are saying it doesn’t work.
Yaysayers are saying an variety of things. Namely:
- “Ah but yes it does. My cat had severe cirrhosis of the liver and they were going to amputate its face but then a homeopath gave it some pills and it’s been fine since. That was 15 years ago.”
- “But I had herbal medicine once and got better”. What this has to do with homeopathy is anyone’s guess.
- “The evil bad pharma people want you to think that it doesn’t work. It’s because they don’t control it and can’t charge you vast amounts for it.” Quite why these loons think that “big pharma” can’t extort a fiver for a small bottle of water is anyone’s guess. I thought it was only charlatans and frauds that repackage water as something it’s not.
- “Some other random treatment I tried worked therefore homeopathy is correct.
This last one was shown on the Beeb today with this marvellous burst of ignorance:
Laughingly this stunt to me actually proves the benefits of homeopathy. Surely the fact you can’t overdose is a positive. Taken with a common sense approach homeopathy can be used to compliment modern medicine. This polemic argument does no one any good. If I have an infection I take antibiotics, but correct exercise and diet has done more to control my back pain than pain killers.
“the fact that you can’t overdose is a positive”? Really. In that case lets all start using air as a remedy. Oh they’ve probably done that already. Has this guy never heard of drowning? That’s a clear overdose of homeopathic “medicine”.
The killer bit is the last phrase of the letter.
“correct exercise and diet has done more to control my back pain than pain killers.”
Maybe that’s because exercising is by far the best treatment for general back pain. Analgesia just kills the pain for a bit, if you don’t deal with the underlying fitness issues then the pain won’t go away long term. The good diet bit has probably allowed you to lose a bit of weight which will stress your back less. And being healthy generally will help with aches and pains.
This literally isn’t rocket science. It’s also nothing to do with homeopathy.
I mean really.
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05 Jan 2010
Posted in News, Rants at 5:10 pm by alby
Head teacher to bullied child’s parent: “Well I’m afraid your son deserved it. He’s ginger you see.”
Grr. The idiocy of it.
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20 Jul 2009
Posted in Rants, Travel at 8:15 am by alby
OMG
What a weekend.
This was my first going-away-to join-some-other-couchsurfers weekend away. Someone had thrown together a let’s-all-go-hiking thing together and I’d managed to get a couple of folk to share the drive up there with.
I met the first, Esther, at Leics train station at 2.15. The second should have been there then but his train was delayed so it was at about 2.45 that we met Vivek. And away!
The weather wasn’t going to be great but the rain was pretty minor at this point. The traffic, however, was bad. It took an age to get to Leeds where my final passenger was to be picked up. We were there nearly 2 hours later than I’d hoped and her phone hadn’t been giving her text messages on time. So she’d been there 2 hours despite us sending her repeated updates of when we’d arrive.
So an annoyed Russian then (please don’t switch my gas off).
And northwards!
The drive wasn’t so bad from this point but the weather was turning miserable. The company wasn’t though so it was an enjoyable trip.
Sat-nav at one point guided me off the A1, drove me round a small town for a bit and then guided me back on to the A1 again. Well impressed with that!
We were to arrive at a small campsite in a little place called Beadnell.
Heaving rain and blowing a gale it were, oh yes and starting to get quite dark.
The gruff bloke at the site whinged at us for being part of a disorganised group and that 2 of our number were sharing with someone but didn’t know whether the someones had arrived. The other knew that someone had arrived but couldn’t remember her surname. I was unbooked and unknown but I was supposed to pitch on the spare bit of someone else’s pitch but I didn’t know her surname either.
So I mentioned: “If it’s going to stay like this then I’ll sleep in the car anyway.”
Ooh that didn’t go down well. “Not in my campsite you won’t”.
Arse.
Being a born rebel I stayed in my car that night. I didn’t see the point in trying to pitch a tent in howling winds and copious rain when there was a perfectly dry and comfy car handy.
Frankly I’m amazed all the tents stayed up that night. Some half blew down and others weren’t up to keeping all the water out so there were some grumpy campers in the morning. Shocking weather, it really was bad.
Now by Sat am we’d not really met many folk. There was nowhere at the campsite to congregate under a roof. So when I got up was when I first met the “organiser” and others. People were remaining keen for the day’s hike. The weather was resolutely unpleasant.
But off to find the start of the hike. It was to be in the National Park. I had Vivek with me and others had joined cars with people they’d shared tents with.
We were first off. Place wasn’t on the satnav (not mine or anyone else’s). The signs were ominous. There were plenty of mildly flooded roads. I went a touch too fast through one large puddle and there was a horrible scraping noise from the front of the car afterwards. I thought it was in the wheel arch at first but couldn’t see anything there. It carried on and eventually I spotted that some plastic had come adrift at the front. (If it helps my dad called it the “sump plate”)
By the time I spotted that it was the dodgy bit it had split but was temporarily mended by a bit of brute force. It held for a few miles or so before needing “mending” again. This went on a while.
As we were nearing our destination we came up to a “weak bridge” that seemed rather pointless as the river wasn’t just under it but around it as well. We were concerned that people would be battling on and waiting for us at the rendezvous so we edged through what was quite a speedy rapid to get to the bridge and over. Safely done.
Further on there was the entrance to the park and the start of a 4 mile drive in the park to the meeting point. Most of this went well until we hit another longer flooded bit. A 4×4 was coming the other way and we flagged him down to ask what the road was like and we were given a “I really wouldn’t advise it” from him. It seemed sensible to concur. So back to a small village with a cafe to take stock.
Bacon buttie. Nom nom.
OK so we weren’t going to be doing the original planned walk. But there were other options for hiking. We got a local tourist map and headed out to a smaller 6 miler from another local village. The journey had more flooded roads which were ok for passing until we got near our target and the road simply disappeared under water.
At the other side was a family in a land rover. And they weren’t risking it. So we didn’t either.
OK back to the first village and try a different route. Nope, that route was flooded out too. There was a 3rd way though. That was flooded as well but passable, slowly. One of our cars (there were 3 in my group) conked out in it. My “repair” decided that it had had enough and seemed irreparable.
Wasn’t going well at this point. We’d had about 3 hours of driving by now and got precisely nowhere; all there was to show was a group of annoyed people and a damaged car.
Eventually I managed both to completely repair the front of my car (with a brief stop and think before slightly more precise brute force did the trick) and add to the floods by stopping to piss on Northumbria; well it had done the same to me for the better part of 24 hours by this point.
Around now we’d had contact from others in the group saying “go to Bamburgh castle”. Back to the A1 and an easy drive (with only 2 major floods to ford) later we were there. By the time we arrived they all wanted to go to Lindesfarne. Annoyed now, we’d been just about 7 miles from there on the way back to Bamburgh Castle. Grrr.
I slept a bit whilst those in my group of 3 cars had a look round the castle before we all headed up to Lindesfarne.
The day actually got quite a bit better from here. The drive was easier and the weather finally started to look up. IE it wasn’t incessantly drizzling.
Got there and spent a nice 3 hours looking round and finally chatting to some of the others who’d braved the trip up.
Some really nice folk it must be said.
I’d picked up a couple of Australians for the ride back to the camp and we headed home.
Now Lindesfarne is on an island and the causeway is only passable at low tide. We were on the causeway and I felt that there was an odd noise coming from the left of the car. Could something else really have gone wrong?
Well yes. Stopping at a passing point I had a look to find a flat rear tyre. Arse.
We changed it reasonably easily but the crap of the first half of the day hit me around now and I wasn’t in the best of moods.
Once back at the site the 4 of us went for chips and fish which was surprisingly excellent. None of us were having the best time so it was no extra surprise that it started raining on us when we out eating our fish.
At this point me, Esther and Vivek all agreed that, rather than paying for an extra night’s misery, we’d hang around to chat and meet people but then would drive home over night. I think we’d all had enough of this.
So to meet the group. They were all getting ready to head to the beach (100m away hurrah) with food for a bbq.
We walked with them for a bit and discovered that they were going about “20mins walk away” to a “nicer” beach. Aarrgh!!!! What’s wrong with the one over the road?
So we walked along the beach but lost the leaders who’d gone along the road. After clambering a lot we got to the road but this mythical “better” beach wasn’t anywhere to be found. The 3 of us companions looked at each other and silently agreed “stuff this for a lark!”
So home we went.
Got back to Leicester at around 2.30 Sunday morning. On the trip I’d spent about £100 on fuel, broke my new car twice, replaced a tyre (actually 2 as one other needed changing – another £200), not camped, not hiked, not had anything in the way of nice weather, and not met many folk who’d gathered for this trip.
Well bloody worth it I must say.
Still, those I met were lovely so hello to Peta, Esther, Vivek and Gunilla and a few others. Maybe one day we’ll meet in happier circumstances…
Photos to come when I get my home internet back.
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12 Jun 2009
Posted in Life, Rants at 9:59 am by alby
I am off work today. Whenever I’m off on a weekday and at home I try to get stuff organised for the house. You know, meter readers to come, that sort of thing.
I had a letter a while back saying my gas boiler was due for its yearly service so please go online to book an appointment.
I did and found that they could come today. Hurrah. So it was duly booked.
I booked an “8am-1pm” slot so been up from far too early. And I have other stuff to do. So I phoned them to ask when they would get here.
“Oh sorry we’re busier than expected and we can’t come today”
Then they had the temerity to offer me next Tuesday at some point.
I’ve said it before but why can’t people just do what they said they would? Now I need to find time some other week for this to get done.
Frankly I thinking of agreeing to the Tuesday appointment but then being, oh I don’t know, at work maybe. Waste their sodding time as much as mine has been wasted.
Grr.
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11 Jun 2009
Posted in Rants, Work at 9:25 pm by alby
Work again.
There are large changes happening in the scenes behind the work I do.
I work for a Primary Care Trust. They organise local health care and they also provide it.
Now this is the source of the problem.
The thought from up high is that there’s a conflict of interest here. How can the people who spend the money also provide the services? Isn’t this unfair on alternative service providers?
The plan is to allow any group to tender for NHS work – IE private companies too.
So they’ve decided already that the commissioning arm of the PCT will have to separate from the provider arm. This will happen before next April.
So my employer will change in the next year.
The most favoured option is for us to become a “Social Enterprise”. NB this means us physios specifically, not the PCT providers as a whole.
In other words a kind of private company. In other other words, not NHS.
If this happens then the people who do the actual work will NOT be NHS staff. However the bureaucrats who organise what services get commissioned WILL be NHS staff.
I wonder how well that will sit with the general public. The cry already is that the NHS has too many managers. What about when the entirety of the local NHS trust is management and admin but no actual healthcare workers?
Ah well what do I know?
The issue for most staff is the terms and conditions of employment. About the only material benefits of NHS work are steady work and a decent pension. If I saw the number of patients privately that I see now then my salary would probably be about 3 times what I get now, but not as good a pension. If I get made to go private and thus lose the pension then I want the benefits of going private.
Can you imagine the hassle trying to hire good, experienced staff? There’s no way unless we can match existing salary and benefits.
So in conclusion: another round of changes done purely for the hell of it, wasting huge amounts of money on an unnecessary scheme which paves the way for privatisation, staff loss, staff morale declining, and which may well change some time next year when the tories get in (not that they’re going to be too fussed about the breakup of the NHS – last I saw they weren’t hostile to the idea of giving their old school mates lots of money – err “privatisation” sorry).
Sigh.
I do wonder why this hasn’t been in the news yet.
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