“I’m 36! I’m 36 Tom Baker!”
Now can you shut up and never use the “the NHS is killing us and this never happens in other countries” shite again please?
Chances have always been that it happens everywhere and it’s just that we cared enough to do something about it starting with transparency of the figures. We’re not special, our bugs are no more resistant than anyone elses.
Have fun.
At the risk of boring the pants of you any more I just must witter briefly about the major news story of the week.
It seems that 2 idiots on the radio said some stupid things on their radio show.
And this is the single biggest news item of the week.
First off, they’re idiots.
Second off, there should be no second part.
That should have been it. 2 people complained on the night. The presenters apologised to the “victim” and the guy sweetly has accepted the apology and wants the story to go away.
But no it isn’t going away. And why?
Apparently people are offended. People who would never in their lives listen to one of these radio shows. Ever.
I think the only proper offended people are the recipient of the message and his granddaughter (who incidentally seems to be rather easily offendable for a goth porn model).
So why all the hooha?
Is it real offence on the part of the media? Err no.
Is it grandstanding to try and demonstrate who’s most moral? No.
What it seems like now is yet another bandwagon jumping onto something that takes the mind off the shitter news that seems to be doing the rounds re recession etc… But I’m not even sure that’s what has led the media flurry of ludicrous over-reaction.
What concerns me is that the anti-beeb forces have got a nice new stick to beat the BBC with. There is a sizeable bunch of idiots people who seem to think that the BBC would be better if it had to have adverts, telly shows as crappy as ITVs and radio of the quality of local independent stations. For these people the licence fee is just another tax (technically it is I suppose). The fact of a tax over-rides any thought that there’s one hell of a benefit to having the BBC as it is. Namely that it’s a shed load better than any other broadcaster.
BBC4 is astonishingly good at times. 3 can be flushed away but 1 and 2 remain as good as ever. And radio 4 is untouchable re intelligent programming.
For some people the thought that they have to pay all the time means that they should be able to watch or listen to any programme and a: not be offended by it; and b: enjoy it.
So many things are wrong with that attitude. By that measure I want to see horror fillums and drama that shows the reality of life with kids TV involving swearing, underage sex, drugs and mindless violence. It offends me that we have to sanitise what goes out over the airwaves. Where’s my rebate and stick to whack the DG with?
Do these people seriously think that a non-public BBC will offend less? I think Channel 4 gives the lie to that idea. So what do they do next? Censorship? Yet more restrictions in the guise of “protecting the public”?
For the record I think that’s rubbish. The real point is this:
The tories had a spokesman on the radio yesterday insisting with a straight face that the DG should resign over this.
This concerns me as the tories have always had a faction that wants to get the BBC privatised. You’d think that the fact that every other privatisation has failed spectacularly (apart from maybe BT) doesn’t seem to deter them.
They’ll likely make the next government too. So are the days of a decent BBC on the wane? Let’s hope not.
And just to repeat. Brand and Ross are dicks but this reaction is ridiculous. There is actual news happening in the world. Can we hear about that instead please?
OK so I’m incontinent today but:
Coo there’s your actual news story about us physios on the BBC. It’s about the idea that people should be able to self-refer to physios rather than taking time up going to see the GP first.
This has been taken in some strange ways on their HYS about the topic.
First off people seem to think that it means that people can just phone in and get a physio appt. This isn’t what self-referral is. When a GP refers us a patient s/he has to fill in a referral form with lots of questions on. This then gets looked at by me (usually) and then I decide whether it gets accepted or not (and if not, why not and a letter written back to the GP), and then whether the patient needs to be seen urgently or whether they can be left on the waiting list for a while. All self-referral means is that the patient will fill a form in to start the process rather than the GP filling it in.
Then there are comments like:
In theory, this sounds like a fantastic idea.
In practice, I fear that physios will be over-burdened with hypercondriacs and time-wasters, something that is becoming more common in recent times.
For example, Mrs A is recovering from a car accident and needs a physio appointment, but the physio cannot see her because she is busy with Mrs B who is just overweight, lazy, and looking for attention or a sick note.
Unfortunately this is what happens anyway. The person who refers is irrelevant. Yes we’ll get more people into the system at first but we won’t be letting regular malingerers in on a regular basis (and yes we do know when you are malingering). I refer you back to the bit about me writing back re why we’re not accepting a referral.
Then the worry seems to be:
This pre-supposes A) The referring individual knows what’s wrong with them, and B) That they know physio will be of benefit to them.
This also means that the physio will have to be able to effectively screen out those who need to see a doctor.
Given the above, I’d be prepared for a lot more mis-diagnosis, complications from inappropriate treatment, and a few people dropping dead as their back pain turns out to be something altogether far more worrying indeed!
and
I am aware of someone who went to his GP and asked to be referred to a physio for back problems etc. The doctor was not happy and referred the person to hospital. The back problem was caused by pressure from a tumour!
Paragraph 1 is pure rubbish. Part A: so people need to know what’s wrong with them before they see a GP? And part B: Why? Surely finding out that physio is not helpful just leads to further investigation. This is what happens now.
Paragraph 2: Erm. Ok I can do condescending (as DB once said, “I know I’ve read your blog”) but that is appalling. What does this guy think we’re trained in? No doubt he’s a “give me some massage” type. Assessments routinely ask “red flag” questions - IE looking for stuff that needs urgent follow-up. We know what musculo-skeletal patterns are there. We know the commonest symptoms and patterns of non-MSK origin. That’s why we spend 3 years or more at uni then years of on-going training on the job.
So paragraph 3 is rather redundant. I’d pick a physio to spot nasty back symptoms in a 45 minute assessment over a rushed non-specialist GP in an 8 minute assessment any day of the week.
The second one is again just what we do day in day out. I’ve spotted tumours, MS, cancer and so on in patients who have been “screened” by GPs. It’s one of the things we’ve been trained for.
And then there’s the political argumentative types:
I wish these imbeciles would stop meddling with the system, they havent got a clue what they are doing as has been found with the contracts and out of hours care….
Let the reshaping suggestions come the other way……far to much meddling from the top is costing us Billions in waste…..
You mean like the large number of studies done re self-referral that show it’s worked well, is cheaper, quicker and less wasteful than GP controlled care? Yeah really top down that stuff.
Oh and the lunatics:
GPs should always be the gate keeper but would benefit from more pain management training and a wider choice of therapies to offer such as massage.
and
The physio also needs to be given the power to refer someone back to their GP if they feel that they should.
So massage is useful (quote from the European Back Pain guidelines “We cannot recommend massage therapy as a treatment for chronic low back pain.” NB this is written by an international committee looking at vast amounts of published and reviewed literature - not merely some bureaucratic nonsense) and someone thinks that physios should be able to refer back to GPs. Like they can’t now? Again it’s what I do multiple times daily should I need to.
But one of the comments made me smile:
Given that most visits to a physio make a trip to a medieval torture chamber seem like a gentle day out, the more malingerers that get folded and half and have their big toes poked up the noses, the better.
Have fun.
PS AAARRRGHHH!!!!
However, telling folk to exercise more isn’t the answer to stop physio referrals as it’ll just increase sports injuries cause by lack of warm ups/downs and good posture.
I’ve just got to work to find my first new patient of the day. The referral is for a nice straightforward hand problem. We have a protocol that basically says hand problems go to the “hands team” at one of the local hospitals.
So naturally it was sent there.
It came back with a rather lovely note.
“Dear Team, I am returning this to you as it should be within the capability of any MSK OPD [musculoskeletal out-patient dept] therapist to treat this condition.”
I love that the thought is that we can’t deal with it. The problem the patient has is very simple and dealable with; and indeed could be dealt with by any MSK physio.
The reason the patient got transferred to them was because “that’s the rule”. Hands go to the hand team. Is it really so very difficult to understand?
In times of few patients they’d be screaming at us for patients like this as they’d be losing staff through having no work for them. But now in times of plenty rather than stick to the guidelines they’d rather just have a dig at the apparent competence of our staff. And they wonder why we had a messy divorce a few years ago.
As well as their business comes our business. We still have something like 50% over-referral so having guidelines like “hand problems go to the hand team” (which were agreed with them) are useful in helping us to not implode through under-capacity.
Never mind, the patient will be in soon and much to the surprise of the hands team I’m sure will probably get a lot better with a bit of time and treatment here.
How sweet of them.
Well here’s a turn up for the books and no mistake.
Some bloke called Pat Condell has a YouTube channel where he vents his spleen about religion. His last video has now been censored (IE removed) by YouTube.
So what has happened?
About 140 copies of it are now currently on YouTube after being uploaded by annoyed fans.
I’ve seen one of these copies (4 different links for basically the same video - just in case one or more of them are taken down) and can’t think quite why it deserves to be banned. Yes it’s ranty, yes it’s angry vs what the guy thinks is the “islamification” of Britain. But isn’t that the point? He’s angry. He’s not vengeful or inciting violence. He’s not even really saying anything beyond “this is a stupid idea which will hurt Islamic women”. Hardly a message to be deemed offensive to anyone except sexually repressed, angry, scared, power fuelled men with a god complex. Frankly the guy should be applauded.
As should YouTube if they’d bloody stuck to the rules of free speech rather than cravenly give in to violent bullies.
Oh and I’ve just heard that Pat has had a warning too, from YouTube, saying that if he says anything nasty again he’ll be banned for a while at least. Mind you at least that sort of warning isn’t as bad as some of the ones he gets on his own site - lovely tolerant people the world has eh?
They really don’t have a clue do they?
If you have a YouTube channel, feel free to upload it again.
Keep free speech as one of the rules of civilisation, or at least try and slow down our descent into banning such montrosities as being able to say what you think.
Have fun.
A couple of great things in the local paper today.
First was a comment on their website about their story of a huge new shopping centre opening in Leicester yeterday.
The Highcroft shopping centre is all I have ever dreamed of. The credit crunch is resigned to history with the opening of what will surely put Leicester along side London, New York, Paris & Bangor in the world of fashion. My only disappointment is that Leicester’s greatest ever celebrity, Mr Willie Thorne, was not there to conduct the opening…shame on you Highcroft.
Marvellous. I thought at first it was a proper comment; then I got to “Bangor”.
The next bit was a letter printed in it today.
It was about the “Creationism vs evolution” “debate”.
Some choice picks:
In Psalms 14 and 53 God says: “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.”
Ah so that’s the not at all circular logic ploy. “The book that says there’s a god, says there’s a god therefore there is a god”.
I prepared the ingredient for a cake. There was a big bang and, hey presto! the ingredients came together, and lo and behold, there was a cake! Really?
Argument from ignorance. “I can’t understand this therefore I don’t believe it.”
This is just not true. It’s an oft repeated story but apparently his daughter was at his bedside when he died and she later stated that he did no such thing. So there’s an argument from fallacy.
I’m sure this guy’s god will be very pleased that he has managed to not only fail to understand a damn thing about the topic but that he has also broken one of the god’s own 10 commandments (Do not bear false witness). I seem to remember the commandments being quite important for believers to follow. Nicely done that idiot.
Oh but look, his piece de resistance:
I love that he’s not religious but still can’t see the irony in the rest of his sentence here. Imbecile or weirdo?
Have fun.
Hmm.
I ordered this. They have delivered this.
Amazon marketplace eh?
Tsk.
A while ago I talked about saving money on bills n’that.
I sent British Gas my gas meter reading as I expected it to be substantially lower than their estimate. It was. Hoorah!
They’ve finally sent me a bill and it makes interesting reading.
There are 4 time periods on it.
They are:
So what they’ve actually done is carry on using their own estimated readings anyway and my supplying of the actual figure has had absolutely no influence on their bill or charges whatsoever.
If we are to believe their figures then they are “estimating” that in one 7 day period I “used” 52% more gas in that one week in summer than I did in the height of winter for 3 months. And just over 93% of the gas used for the first 6 months of the year.
I spy a grumpy phone call on Tuesday. Bastards.
It’s the time of year for GCSE results again.
Which means it’s time for the annual “exams are getting easier” argument.
Are they?
From what I’ve seen…maybe.
It may not be that exams are getting easier but I heard something yesterday that convinced me that they’re easier to pass.
Radio 1 did a thing where some of their presenters did the hardest version of the GCSE maths paper.
Oh and quell surprise. The results were startlingly shit.
All of them except 1 failed. They even had their percentages read out (although I could guess that none of them actually know what a percentage is), 7%, 11% and one even managed the feat of getting “nil”. Now to manage this last would have involved not understanding enough to write your name in the “name” box on the paper.
And oh how they laughed. “Well done us we are so dim, ah but we’re friendly so that’s alright”.
Fucking imbeciles! Let’s just celebrate the fact that we have a nation of thick as pig shit people doing well shall we? Fucking hell.
The worst of it was the woman who “passed”. She got a grade C. With 26% correct.
What the fuck! 26% is a pass nowadays? For christ’s sake what the hell is going on here?
No bloody wonder that new uni students don’t have a clue, uni courses are adding more and more “remedial years” to their courses, new employees can’t write an understandable letter, and nurses struggle to figure out that if an EMG chart goes at 60 squares a minute through the machine then 1 square takes 1second.
Oh my word.
Send me a bloody paper. I haven’t done maths at that level for 21 years but I seriously doubt I’d struggle to make an A* grade considering the pathetic easiness of the sample questions in the papers this morning.
And stop fucking celebrating the fact that you’re shit at things. It doesn’t help.
Hah that title should have worried a couple of people who are going with me to EJC.
Anyway it is about juggling but not the EJC. The EJC will be fun.
This Vova vs Gatto spinning round like a dick competition thing. What a tedious waste of everyone’s life it is.
We have Vova’s mates hurrahing. We have Vova cheating then getting arsey when people call him on it, we have people actually giving a toss about a completely contrived “record”.
And ffs this shite is still going on?
I’ve avoided it so far but frankly it’s bunging up the juggling pages with shit and I’m now annoyed by the level of seriousness that seems to be exercising people there.
“But he’s the best”, “No he’s the best”, “No he really is the best.” etc ad nauseum. Massive stack of wank. Well done.
I like my internet and I like reading the juggly stuff but frankly the week away at the EJC will give people time to chat about something even vaguely interesting.
Well done you’re very good, now go and do something a: worthwhile, b: interesting and c: else.
[edit] I’ve just thought what this “contest” is like. Imagine a local golf pro bragging that he’s better than Tiger Woods because he can play a local par 3 quite well. That’s what it reminds me of.