Woman, 84, discharged in nightie

As you will no by now, we are completely unsympathetic to the excuses made by public servants when they do something dumb, thoughtless and uncaring. So when some unthinking moron discharges and elderly lady from hospital at 3am then we must speak out in the name of common sense and decency.

In fact, we think that the only way to remedy these situations is for the person making these descisions to take responsibility and suffer the consequences.

So whoever made this diabolical descision at Herfeford hospital should suffer the consequences. They are definitely not able to make descisions that affect people's lives.

Do you want this person to be making descisions affecting the care and health of your loved ones? Of course you don't.

The person or persons are not fit for the post and should be removed immediately before anyone dies.

Stomach bug sweeping the country (UK)

Wash your hands!

I was lucky enough to be on the Ocean Villager 2 cruise ship this summer, and I was very impressed by their safeguards to prevent an outbreak of the NoroVirus.

At each entrance to any dining hall there was a member of staff who stood in your way with a hand wash gel for you to wash your hands before entering the dining hall.

The gel itself was a much better solution than I have seen in any of our hospitals. I think hospital managers could look at what the Ocean Villager did and use this to ensure that all hospital STAFF and VISITORS wahsed their hands BEFORE entering the hospital.

This should be supplemented by washing the hands of all patients and staff before each meal. Simply carry the gel around with the meal tray.

Making Money Online

I have always wanted to find a nice easy way to make money.

Now, even if I put $10,000 in the bank or even a pretty good mutual fund, I would not really have too much to show after 10 or 15 years. At least that is what I thought until I discovered the investment system being used by stocksmonthly.com

Their investment method is fairly simple and obvious, and they do all the work for you.

If they can perform as well over the next 15 years as they did over the last 15 years then I am not going to worry too much about my blog traffic.

Anger as NHS patient records lost

It has only been a few days since our last post about how incompetent our civil service really is.

However, the recent revelations regarding the loss of NHS data in England and Wales shows systemic failure is rife.

Senior civil servants and senior government ministers really do need to lose their jobs when the level of incompetence reaches such levels.

Remember the Prime Minister is in charge of the Civil Service. Either he needs to act, or he needs to go.

The depatment of administrative affairs, Jim Hacker, and Sir Humphrey whoever these real life mandarins are have truly lost the confidence of the public and Yes Prime Minister's Jim Hacker would appear to be more up for the job than the current incumbent.

W.H. Smith Generous to a fault - Offer Sucks!

Whilst shopping for christmas presents this year, I received a £5 voucher to spend at their sale between 26-Dec-2007 and 6-jan-2008.



I thought, that will be nice, I maybe use it to get a discount on some computer games or DVDs.

That is, until I read the small print on the back of the voucher.

"Offer excludes all CDs DVDs and Games, ie. XBOX 360, PSP, PS2, PS3, NDS, PC, GameCube, Xbox, GBA and Wii, and stamps , tobacco, gift vouchers, phone cards, e-gift cards, book tokens, Day Out Vouchers, Carity Products, iTunes, eTop-UP & National Lottery products. Cannot be used with any other promotional voucher or with customer orders. Only one voucher per transaction."

For those of you who live in the UK and know W.H. Smith, you will also know that after you exclude the above named products that there is not much left.

I think I will just use the voucher to wipe my @rse, and return it to the person who thought up the idea in the first place.

How the British Consumer is being Screwed

(If you are unable to see full image then click on the image.)


Today with the advent of the world wide enconomy and the internet, global companies manufacture and sell their wares all over the world. This christmas I had to shop for friends and relatives in both the United States and the UK. It is frighteneing how much more the British consumer has to pay in comparison to their American Cousins.

I have been careful to compare like for like. Normally UK prices include VAT but US prices exclude sales tax. For the sake of comparison I have deducted the horrendously high 17.5% VAT from the UK prices and compared them with the US (Excl Sales tax) Prices.

The worst offenders are large companies. Microsoft are charging, in some cases, 36% more for their software here in the UK than in the US. Of course, our governement cares nothing about the British comsumer, nor inflation apparently.

The UK £ / US $ exchange rate on 20-Dec-2007 was £1 = $2.032.

If you think that the current situation is fair then do nothing. Remember that we are paid on average aboput 10% less than our American cousins.

However, if you think this is unfair and unacceptable then write, call or email, television channels, newspapers, MP's and local councillors. Let's fight for fairness and let us stop subsidising the rest of the world.

Sources:

Amazon USA
Amazon UK
Cheap iPods
Microsoft
Jaguar

Is the British Civil Service Totally Incompetent?

John Reid, the former home secretary, has already told us that the Home Office is not fit for purpose.

Well the recent fiasco with HM Customs and Revenue losing vital data on nearly half the population of the country started us thinking.

Then we are told just a couple of weeks later that some moron in the Driver and Vehicle Driving Agency in Northern Ireland has lost data on 7,685 vehicles and 6,000 vehicle keepers.

Oh No! It’s not finished yet. Just as we are thinking that it cannot get any worse, we are told another disc containing details of 3 million learner drivers has gone missing. Even worse the data was stored in a foreign country. And to show what complete incompetents this government, their ministers and the civil service really are the latest episode we are told happened six months ago.

Now for sheer cheek and hypocrisy, the Government has fined Norwich Union £1.6M for losing the data of 74 people.

That works out at approximately £21,621 per person.So using the Government figures of 25Million from HM Revenue, and 3,013,685 from the DVLA, then the Data Protection registrar should be fining this Government £605,683,883,385.

No minister has lost his or her job, and apart from the HM Revenue guy who resigned, no civil servant has been fired. Everyone we speak to is running for cover, no one is taking responsibility, and it is fair to say that competence is not something we can have much expectation of from our public servants.

We, the public, pay the wages of these people. We pay good money and should reasonably expect workers who are honest and competent. Should we find that these two attributes are missing, then I’m afraid that there really is no place in public service for those lacking these attributes.

Does any member of the public really believe that no one has received a peerage or a Knighthood for donations to any of the major political parties?

No authority without responsibility should be the rule.

Every project, every policy would have a responsible person and if there is a screw-up then we will immediately know who to look to for the answers.

Lunatics running the asylum are bad enough but we really can’t have them running the country as well.

Free Online Wish List

Christmas gift shopping has been so much easier this year. I got the kids, my nephews and nieces all to create a christmas wish list at http://www.youcouldgetme.com/. When it came time to do my christmas shopping I visited each gift list and bought something that they really wanted this time.

I even tested it out for myself. My birthday is only two weeks before christmas, and I am at that sort of age when nobody knows what to buy me. So this year, about three weeks before my birthday I went on a virtual shopping spree.

I added gifts that I really wanted. Some expensive. Some very modestly priced - makes it easier for my kids to buy me something too :)

Give it a try...

Big Brother is listening!

Imagine if you are a political candidate (republican or democrat) and you are discussing your policies with a potential voter. In “managing their network” Comcast finds that it can cut its traffic in half if it only allows one party’s political traffic through.

Or, what if you are doing business on the web selling Coca Cola, but Comcast has done a deal with Pepsi and disrupts all internet traffic affecting Coca Cola Sales. Far Fetched yes, but what’s to stop this now that they have made a start.

Maybe a rival hosting company does a deal with Comcast. Suddenly CrystalTech Users find that their customers’ transactions are being disrupted.

Where does it stop?

You sign up with Comcast, but Comcast has the right to say who you can talk to and what you can talk about, is that what we really want?

Mobile Phone Fraud in the UK

Mobile phone companies allow fraudsters direct access to your cash?

Do you own a mobile phone?

If yes, did you know that mobile phone companies allow fraudsters direct access to your cash?

How do they do this? Anyone with a premium rate ‘texting’ service can send you a text message. Even if you did not ask for the message to be sent, your account will be charged for the text messages you receive, or if you use ‘pay-as-you-go’ your balance will still be debited for each message received.

You could be charged around £1.50 for each message received. This is nothing more than straight theft.

This happened to me. I was receiving text messages, but when I went to read the message it said “message unable to be displayed”. At first I thought that they were just wrong numbers. However, I began to notice that after each message was received the balance on my ‘pay-as-you-go’ was being reduced.

I called O2, my mobile service provider; they told me that there was nothing that they could do. Neither did they have a system that would allow me to STOP all premium text messages to my mobile number. They told me to call ICSTIS, who are they regulator for mobile premium services.

I called ICSTIS, who gave me the name of the company who had been calling me and their phone number. Now remember, this is the company who had been stealing my money. ICSTIS want me to tell these (to my mind) criminals to stop stealing my money and to give me back what they have stolen. In order to do this I have to give these criminals more of my personal details. What lunatic thought up such a system?

This is the same as going to the police and telling them that you have been burgled and the police giving you the name and address of the burglar and telling you to go and talk to the burglar and ask him to give you your property back.

The system which allows mobile phone companies to charge you for receiving calls or text messages is fundamentally flawed and open to serious abuse.

The situation described above is one circumstance where you can be charged for receiving unwanted or fraudulent messages. It is like being told to open your wallet and let anyone who cares to text you to help themselves.

I have always thought that the system where the receiver of a call pays was unsatisfactory and open to abuse. I experienced a similar situation when I worked abroad as an IT consultant. Agents would call from the UK to determine my availability for new contracts or to find out if I knew someone who could do the contract. Well, because I was receiving this call whilst in another country, the phone company also charge me for receiving the call. Many times these calls were no more than nuisance calls or ‘spam’ to use a term that email users are all too familiar with.

The trouble with unwanted texts or mobile calls is that they cost you real money.

The only way to stop this absurd situation is to prevent mobile phone companies making any charges to the receivers account. In all situations the caller should pay for the call.

The people who have been ‘texting’ me without my permission should be charged with fraud or theft.

I have called both ICSTIS and OFCOM and neither organisation appears willing to do very much about the current situation.

Two things need to happen very quickly.

Mobile phone companies should be required to block all premium message text services upon a user’s request.
The charging system used by mobile phone companies MUST be changed so it is the caller that bears the full cost of the call. Callers must be made aware, in advance, of the call rate being charged.

Please write or email your member of parliament in the UK and contact the news media to ensure that this fraud (permitted by our government and watchdog bodies) can be stopped.