Our Health Secretary will apparently say, “Today I am setting out how we will equip the new regulator with tougher powers, backed by fines, to inspect, investigate and intervene where hospitals are failing to meet hygiene standards.” So, apparently, this is going to help crack down on MRSA, but who I wonder is going to be fined? Is it going to be the Nigerian illegal immigrant mopping all the floors and wiping down all surfaces with the same bucket of dirty water? Is it going to be the doctor who failed to wash his hands after taking a dump? Or the nurse whose education now tells her more about how she should treat the Nigerian cleaner than about hygiene? Is it going to be the wanker politicians who so overloaded the NHS with red tape, targets and useless bureacrats to deal with all this that there’s not enough money for a bottle of Domestos? Is it going to be the waste-of-space hospital managers who sit quivering in their offices? No, of course it isn’t. The dirty hospital will be fined, the guilty parties will continue trousering their inflated salaries, more red tape will be generated, the doctors and nurses will be wasting their time filling in paperwork, and stumbling over a new strata of ideologically correct bureaucrats incapable of dealing with the real problems and, because the hospital budget has been reduced, patient services will be trimmed down, hurried, cut. And where will the money from the fine go? To another hospital? Well maybe a small portion of it, after most of it has been hoovered up by the twats administering it all. End result: microscopic change in services, huge amounts of money wasted.
Tag: In the News
Plastic Waste.
Just to put in a counterpoint to my recent rants, I thought I’d point out that though I disagree with the AGW religion, I am in agreement with much else the ‘green’ movement highlights. So, keeping it specific, I though I’d talk about plastics which, in my opinion are worse than AGW, even if it were true. Plastics are damned useful. They can be formed into just about any shape we might want, they can be impermeable to water, they decay very slowly, they can be as strong as steel and as soft as cotton, excellent insulators, any colour under the sun and even no colour at all. We can make just about anything out of them, and frequently do … but why am I telling you this? If you don’t already know it already, then just walk around your home and you’ll see. The problem with plastics is that they are damned useful, get used, and decay very slowly. A further problem is the throw-away society in which they are being used. And these facts combined are causing some major fuck-ups. We really should stop using the damned substance unless it is really needed, yet time and time again this oil-based limited resource is used once and discarded. Here’s a few facts grabbed at random off the Internet:
- A plastic milk jug takes 1 million years to decompose.
- A plastic cup can take 50 – 80 years to decompose.
- Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every HOUR.
- Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1 million sea creatures every year.
- An estimated 14 billion pounds of trash, much of it plastic is dumped in the world’s oceans every year.
- There are 13,000 pieces of plastic litter per square kilometre of the world’s oceans.
- The worldwide fishing industry dumps an estimated 150,000 tons of plastic into the ocean each year, including packaging, plastic nets, lines, and buoys.
- Every year we make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap the state of Texas.
- Plastic production uses 8% of the world’s oil production.
- Nearly every piece of plastic EVER made still exists today.
I mean, why is it necessary to wrap fruit, which already has a skin, in a layer of plastic, in a plastic tray, and then lug it out of the supermarket in a plastic carrier bag? Hell, just buy your apples or pears and take them home in a re-useable bag, then put them in your fruit bowl. The only difference here would be less plastic crud in your bin ready to go out to the dustmen and end up in the remit of the recycling police. Another one is cotton buds with plastic sticks: one delve in the earhole then down the toilet and flushed away, then off to fuck up marine life. Plastic carrier bags, give me strength … WHY? Well, because people are accustomed to being supplied with them. Cut the supply and people will soon get used to taking along their own bags, then perhaps we’ll see a few less trees decorated with a foliage of the damned things aruond supermarkets. Plastic bags generally are overused, and found jamming up the guts of numerous sea creatures, along with numerous other throw-away plastic items. Another great way to cut down on landfill would be if printer companies weren’t so fucking greedy – be nice if just one of them made a printer with refillable reserviors and a life-span above about two years. The same applies to a lot of other electrical stuff. Then there’s a particular bugbear of mine, and this is directed at you, yes you, the one who buys Volvic, or Evian or any other of those bottled waters. That stuff is no better than tap water, in fact, it is very often much worse and, after you’ve drunk it, one more fucking plastic bottle goes in the bin. Please, Mr or Mrs I-think-I’m-cool-with-my-bottled-water, go find the Penn and Teller video clip on You Tube about bottled water, and learn just how much of a complete prat you are.
Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide!
All rather confirms what I already know about the ‘green’ movement. Okay, you’ve done protesting, now get back to Mummy and Daddy’s house in Berkshire.(From Devil’s Kitchen)
Media Darlings.
What a contrast we have here. Pavarotti was the son of a baker who through grit, talent, hard work and determination became famous as one of the world’s greatest tenors whose singing gave pleasure to millions. The other person in the photo was a slightly dim hurray Henrietta targeted by the royal family as a brood mare because they thought she would be no trouble, therefore married into fame, became a media darling because she had big photogenic doleful eyes and who, despite her great works for charity, still managed to shuffle off this mortal coil leaving a twenty-one million inheritance. I know which one deserves flowers and public mourning, it’s a shame so many don’t.
Pat Condell.
Here’s the link to all the video clips made by the guy in the previous post, Pat Condell. I have to say I can’t find much to disagree with in any of them, and they’re all entertaining.
http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=patcondell&p=r
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act — George Orwell.
Brown's First War.
Brown has been Prime Minister for what, a matter of weeks, and already he wants to start sending our troops to war, this time in Darfur. He is also generously promising a £100 million of our money for this too – our Gordon is ever so generous with other people’s money, it’s a socialist thing. What a total wanker. Good grief, what is it with these Labour politicians? They hate and despise our armed forces and everything they stand for, deliberately underfund them, stick the knife in whenever possible, yet when the opportunity arises to send them off to fight there’s no hesitation. Is this seated in childhood envy of the cool kid’s Action Man? Were they the ones who had to make do with a bicycle pump while all the rest were running around with plastic machine guns? Or were they the kids that got the plastic soldier shoved up the nose? Buggered if I know, but certainly once they get hold of the boy’s toys they can’t resist using them to kill.
Seagulls.
Tonight I watched The One Show (I know, but there was nothing else on and I was feeling indolent) in which they did a bit about towns infested with seagulls. Apparently one of those suffering the worst from these flying sea-rats was the inland town of Gloucester (though the description ‘inland’ has to be used rather ironically lately). The seagulls, apparently, feed on the local landfill, then nest on the town’s buildings. Certain measures are being taken. There’s a guy going round putting false eggs in their nests so they incubate them all year rather than laying new ones. Then there’s another guy with an eco-beard and probably recycled underpants, who feels the problem needs to be studied at length. Obviously an ecological balance needs to be struck. Certainly, it would appear, the residents need to learn to live with and love these birds. Fuck, right, off. There is no need for study. The birds fill themselves up from the mounds of discarded food at the landfill, then they come into the town to rip open dustbin bags in pursuit of their preferred diet, to fuck noisily, nest on top of the buildings and drop half a pound of shit on the nearest parked car, and each year their population increases. I know. I’ve stayed in Hastings and listened to them shrieking while they shag at four in the morning, I’ve seen the torn-open dustbin bags and my car, parked for two days, must have used half a gallon extra of petrol when I drove home with the extra weight of guano.
What is needed here is a very simple approach, with a shotgun. But of course that’s never going to happen with councils and government involved. The simple expedient of slipping a local farmer a few quid to bring down the gull population would never happen in over-managed and fucked-up Britain. Risk assessments would need to be made, the HSE would have to be involved, the local animal-rights dicks would be there with their placards and fire-bombs addressed to the farmer, a manager or two would need to be employed the perhaps a police cordon set up while the farmer did his work. It’s all so unutterably tiresome, and when anything ever does get done it costs twenty times as much as it should. To the people of Gloucester I say, try to find and employ some ex-army guy fresh out of Afghanistan with a night-sighted rifle, and after he’s shot your council and the animal-rights protesters, get him to start on the seagulls
Olympic Logo.
Amazing Grace
Interesting. Keying off of that post below about the barbecue police and my repetition of that ‘don’t believe what you read in the papers’ I should add ‘don’t believe what you see on the big screen’. This weekend back we went to see Amazing Grace which was enjoyable and certainly plucked at the heart strings. However, at the start of the film it states that the British Empire was built on the backs of slaves. No mention there of the ‘jewel in the crown’ … y’know, that place called India. And, hang on, what was this film about? It was about that same fucking empire banning that trade (Wilberforce did not singlehandedly do it). That would be the British Empire that blew more wealth on later suppressing the slave trade than it earlier made from it. A few days after the film, not being able to remember the name of the guy played by Ioan Gruffud i.e William Wilberforce – the guy the film was all about (it’s our age you know) we looked him up in a biographical dictionary and discovered some interesting facts: Wilberforce died a month before the emancipation bill was passed, so he wasn’t there in Parliament, and Pitt the Younger, who in the film apparently dies just before said act was passed, died 27 years before it. Dramatic licence or Hollywood rewriting history as it tends to? I mean, we’ve already learned from the dream factory that American troops single-handedly thrashed Germany in the World War II…
Roller Trainers.
A boy was badly injured his morning because he shot in front of a car on his wheeled trainers. Questions are being asked. A&E doctors talk of the injuries kids receive whilst using these things: busted bones and cuts and grazes. Health and Safety commissars demand that children wear protective gear and, of course, there is talk of a ban.
Hang on.
Now, as mentioned here in the comments, must parents bubble-wrap their children? Which would they prefer, an active child who risks a busted elbow and the remote possibility of death, or the fat slob slouched in front of his X-Box who’ll need his jaw wired shut or stomach stapled and risks snuffing it from a heart attack before he’s thirty?
Also, if you bubble-wrap your children they’ll never learn to handle the real world, you know, the one where hammers are made out of steel and not rubber, where knives cut, concrete is not layered with foam rubber, cars smash your bones if you step in front of them and where sticking your hand into the wrong part of the machine on the factory floor results in your arm disappearing into the cogs. Yeah, there’s the compensation claims, but they ain’t going to sew your arm back on.