Link

More on Retinoblastoma

I'm going to have a go at this, now that Glynis has explained what it's about. Hmm...


1. Dorset Cereals muesli is really great; they do a six box variety pack in a reasonably sized helping.

Link

You know how it is when you get into this PP thing: you carry your camera around photographing anything and everything on the offchance you'll do a blog on it all one day. Well, here are a couple I took at Butlin's Bognor Regis earlier this month, sitting at the  Sun and Moon Olde Public House (which, for those of you planning a visit had the best food there) while Oscar climbed all over the outdoor play area next door. I just couldn't decide which one to blog about before, so thanks again to the PP team for this week's theme, because now I can use them both. I'm sure you'll agree they're both beautiful. 

Just to test your photography appreciation skills here's a question for you:

Which one is a pear cider and which one is an ice beer?

Back to Picture Perfect

I only just managed to get these swans photographed by chance last weekend, a good way away from my former abode. They're now adult sized. The parents swanned off and left them to themselves while they were being fed by a boy on the cruiser. That's it for swans.

I have woken up to a major water leak and am waiting for ye olde plumbre to arrive. This is not a good time as I shall be on call till late two days in the trot and so will have to leave them to their own devices. While waiting I shall ramble on about other stuff.

Glary Glitter has been pissing me off for a few days. LINK   He's been banged up on charges of paedophilia and is still making all this song and dance, trying to be in control of his life and stay in the Far East, which understandably doesn't want our rubbish dumped in its backyard. He reckons he's a free man because he's done his time for his crime. I hate it when ex-cons start that whining, self-pitying, self-congratulatory "I've paid my debt to society" stuff. Wrong! Society has had to pay through the nose to keep you banged up so that you can't go around harming its members for a while. If you're put away for paedophilia, you're never free again because of the high chance of re-offending, Paul Gadd. I hope they watch you like a hawk for ever.

Plumber's here, got to go. I might rant about something else again tomorrow.

Link

Some of you in the UK may have read about this Extended Hours thing that's going on in the papers and be wondering what it is, so here's an explanation. Most Primary Care Trusts and GPs have only really just got to grips with it. You need a bit of history first to understand the change.

Until 2003, each GP was contractually responsible for 24 hour care for their registered patients. Clearly being on call 24 hours a day 365 days a year and not being able to take holiday is unworkable, so most GPs ended up forming partnerships with other GPs. They were then able to be on call in rotation, doing say every fourth night and every fourth weekend on call. Some GPs remained in single-handed practice and employed locums to cover for them.

As people get older, have families and therefore responsiblities towards the latter, staying up once a week after a hard day's work and usually the next working day as well becomes physically and emotionally exhausting for everyone concerned. In the 1980s, to reduce the frequency of on call shifts, GPs formed large co-operative groups outside their partnerships, some having up to 200 doctors or more taking it in turn to cover work out of hours. It made being on call more enjoyable because there were opportunities to network with other people, share knowledge and in cases where drivers were provided took away the stress of having to drive around strange and potentially dangerous  areas late at night trying to see house numbers.

Unfortunately the whole thing coincided with EU working rules, which were applied to junior doctors who might have decided they wanted to become GPs one day. They chose other career paths in droves as they were trained to have different expectations of the hours they worked and the quality of their working lives, many emigrating or seeking other UK specialities which offered nine to five jobs. To entice people back, the government gave GPs the option to opt out of providing an Out Of Hours service between 6.30pm and 8am. GPs took the option in their thousands, forfeiting several thousand pounds in the process, although the latter incidentally was far lower than the true cost of providing the service. Some continued to work for Co-operatives, other Co-operatives closed down because they lost their contracts to private providers, some of which have been excellent and others just lousy. That's still what's happening as far as Out Of Hours services are concerned.

The government is now trying to improve patient satisfaction with the NHS by offering evening surgeries between 6.30pm and 8pm , the idea being that it will be easier for people who work to see a doctor without taking time out from their jobs. The appointments must all be pre-booked ones for routine conditions. Emergencies must still be dealt with by the Out Of Hours service. A minimum number of hours and appointments  must be provided per week per GP. If they choose to see additional patients or emergencies that's up to them. Nurses count as half a GP.

So I've started doing my Extended Hours once a week. I finish  my evening surgery at 6.30pm, eat a bowl of Weetabix and then see six patients until 7.50 Not everyone has to provide Extended Hours, but if they don't they are likely to lose thousands of pounds, which is the cost of a couple of part-time receptionists' salaries.To reduce our overheads, another partner works downstairs on the same night. There's a receptionist on duty to check people in and out. We aren't using one of our Nurses because it will mean additional expenditure. Extended Hours are optional.

My first session was last week. One person out of six didn't show. According to other GPs who have chosen to provide Saturday morning Extended Hours that can run to three or four. The times are determined by patient surveys which each practice does. Half of those replying to us wanted Saturday mornings, a quarter weekday evenings and a quarter weekday early mornings. We went for evenings for all, not Fridays, because it seems the most reliable way to ensure that people don't waste our time and money by sloping off to the pub with their mates instead. I was pretty whacked by the time I got home afterwards since it happened on my on call day. Hungry as well: next time I shall have three or even four Weetabix.

I woke up this morning thinking this was going to be just another day. Then I started working through my Inbox. Suddenly I came to this post. I found the film a bit slushy and contrived, but always liked the song, though it's always made me more moody than anything else. This version is sung by one of my online friends who was a professonal singer,  and as I listened to it and thought about her recording it I couldn't help smiling. It was the feeling that in spite of being thousands of miles apart I could feel someone in the same room as me pouring her heart out. She never misses or hits a duff note either.

Link

Here's more

Another one

From The Times
August 16, 2008

'I tried to save girl after lifeboat launch was banned'

A father described yesterday how he was nearly swept to his death trying to rescue a girl at a beach where a coastguard crew were forbidden from launching their boat.

Lee Dobson, 35, told The Times that he and two other men had been in danger of drowning after going to the aid of a teenage girl swept more than 100 metres out to sea by strong currents.

“I had to leave her because I knew that if I stayed with her there could have been two bodies brought back in rather than potentially one,” he said. “It was the most difficult decision I have ever had to make – to leave her and get myself back in.”

He added: “When I left her I was extremely tired but I was torn between trying to still get her in and trying to get myself in. She was screaming at me not to leave her. That will stay with me for a long time.”

The volunteer lifeboat crew at Hope Cove, in South Devon, had been told not to launch their vessel because of concerns over its seaworthiness. They eventually chose to ignore the advice after becoming convinced that the girl was about to drown.

Despite bringing her safely ashore, the crew now face disciplinary action by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) after deciding not to wait while another vessel was dispatched from six miles away.

Mr Dobson described the decision to forbid the local lifeboat to launch as “absolutely crazy”. The MCA said on Thursday that search-and-rescue effectiveness had not been compromised by the suspension of any boats.

By the time that the Hope Cove rescue boat finally launched, five adults had plunged into the sea to rescue the stricken swimmer and her sister.

The three men farthest out, including Mr Dobson, became so worried for their own safety that they swam back to shore.

The girls, believed to be in their teens, were swept out to sea in front of holidaymakers on Tuesday morning. They have not been identified.

“I saw at once that both girls were in trouble, and by that stage the one farthest out was about 50 metres from the shore,” said Mr Dobson, who was on holiday with his wife, two young children and his parents-in-law. “I just knew I had to try to rescue her.”

Describing himself as a good but not strong swimmer, he said that he tried repeatedly to swim back in with the girl but was unable to make it through the riptide.

He said that he stayed with the girl for at least ten minutes – by which time they had been swept to the head of the bay – before deciding to get back to shore. The teenager was on the brink of exhaustion from being battered by waves and pulled out to sea.

By this time, the two other men who had swum out to help her had also gone back. Mr Dobson, who is head of events management at the Barbican in London, said that he was “gob-smacked” by the failure of the local lifeboat – just a couple of hundred yards away – to launch.

“It was absolutely crazy. To tell them not to launch when the person at the other end of the phone is miles away and not seeing the danger is completely senseless,” he said.

Julia Mitchell, 61, Mr Dobson’s mother-in-law, said that she was “hysterical” as she stood on the beach with hundreds of people also watching, fearing for her son-in-law.

The coastguard crew at Hope Cove had been told not to launch their rescue boat because of safety concerns over the hull. However, the crew claimed to have lost radio contact with coastguard chiefs, and, fearing that it would take too long for another lifeboat to reach them, decided to brave the heavy surf.

Local people said that by the time they reached the girl a diver had swum to her rescue and was holding her afloat. The crew then brought the girl back to the shore. Within hours the boat had been confiscated and the station officer and his crew had been threatened with disciplinary action.

A spokesman for the MCA said that the primary cover for Hope Cove was provided by the lifeboat at Salcombe five miles away. He said: “We have a set of standards by which we look at the service provision and Salcombe meets those provisions.” 

Ten minutes up the lane tonight and suddenly it was twilight at 8.20pm. I just saw this branch of pink dog roses glimmering at me out of the darkness before it was too late. There was a bumblebee still buzzing around, but it vanished when the flash went off. The rosehips are just beginning to form.  Autumn is definitely on its way.

Link

Thanks, Alicia.

While ferrying children around the South Coast and returning Oscar to Jo, I managed to snap the cygnets again. Their white feathers are coming through now and they look nearly adult sized.

From The Times

August 8, 2008



Bin Laden driver gets 66 months - but will never be released


Tim Reid in Washington


Osama bin Laden’s former driver was sentenced to less than six years in prison last night, an extraordinarily light sentence and the latest blow to the Bush Administration’s efforts to justify its highly controversial military tribunal system at Guantanamo Bay.

The sentence of five-and-a-half years for Salim Hamdan, handed down by a jury of US military officers in the first war-crimes tribunal to be held at Guantanamo Bay, fell far short of the 30 years incarceration sought by Bush Administration lawyers and means that the Yemeni is eligible for release in just five months.

As soon as the sentence was issued, however, the Pentagon made it clear that it had no intention of releasing Hamdan. It says that it retains the right to keep him in prison for an indefinite period because he has been classed as an “unlawful enemy combatant”.

Such intransigence in the face of last night’s sentence handed down by an all-military jury with rules of evidence that favoured the prosecution will bolster the case made by civil rights groups, and much of the international community, that holding Guantanamo Bay detainees indefinitely is unjustifiable, particularly after they have been tried. With Mr Bush leaving office in six months the problem of what to do with Hamdan — and the other detainees — will fall to his successor.

   
The sentencing hearing came after Hamdan was convicted on Wednesday of providing support to al-Qaeda, but was acquitted of the more serious charge of conspiring to attack civilians. It was a verdict that meant that the Administration was unable to prove that he had helped to plot and carry out attacks.

Before the sentence Hamdan expressed sorrow and apologised over innocents killed — an apparent reference to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. He appealed for leniency in the first US war crimes trial since the Second World War.

Wearing a charcoal sports coat and white turban, Hamdan, speaking in Arabic, said through an interpreter: “It was a sorry or sad thing to see innocent people killed. I personally present my apologies to them if anything what I did have caused them pain.”

When the verdict was handed down by the six-member jury, he said: “I would like to apologise one more time to all the members and I would like to thank you for what you have done for me.”

The military judge told Hamdan: “I hope the day comes that you return to your wife and daughters and your country, and you’re able to be a provider, a father and a husband in the best sense of all those terms.

Hamdan responded: “God willing.” Prosecutors had insisted that he remained a dangerous man and that he should get at least 30 years behind bars for his work for bin Laden, who remains at large nearly seven years after the worst terrorist strikes on US soil.

Before the jury began to confer, defence lawyers said that Hamdan posed no danger as a former driver, regretted his links to bin Laden and suggested that he should be sentenced to no more than 45 months.

“He made a series of bad decisions,” Charles Swift, his defence attorney, said. “Looking back they are terrible decisions.”

Hamdan, believed to be 40, was arrested at a roadblock in Afghanistan in November 2001. He had two surface-to-air missiles in the car. The prosecution said that between 1998 and 2001 he had delivered weapons for al-Qaeda and was part of the inner circle of bin Laden. 


This case, or rather the media approach to it here has been bothering me since it first hit the headlines. There's been a "he was only doing his job" slant on things throughout, which is also being taken up by various civil liberties groups.

It seems to me that with any job go certain responsibilities. Drivers are responsible for whatever they happen to be carrying. It's unusual for lorry drivers, for example, who are caught smuggling illegal goods or immigrants, to be let off on the grounds that they didn't know what they were carrying.

In this country, any proven connection with a murder weapon is enough to convict someone of having been involved in that person's murder, even if the weapon is claimed to have come into the person's possession inadvertently after the event.

From where I am, just carrying missiles in a car is evidence  that  whoever is driving them around  intends their use against targets determined by his employers and is in the end as guilty as them. He did a grand job of apologising and showing remorse: perhaps that's what convinced the judge.

Perhaps this Brazilian will get off lightly now as well:

    Link

 

They sailed away in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they sailed so fast,
  With only a beautiful pea-green veil
Tied with a riband by way of a sail,
  To a small tobacco-pipe mast;
And every one said, who saw them go,
'O won't they be soon upset, you know!
For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long,
And happen what may, it's extremely wrong
  In a Sieve to sail so fast!'
      Far and few, far and few,
            Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
      Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
            And they went to sea in a Sieve.

 

The water it soon came in, it did,
  The water it soon came in;
So to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet
In a pinky paper all folded neat,
  And they fastened it down with a pin.
And they passed the night in a crockery-jar,
And each of them said, 'How wise we are!
Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,
Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,
  While round in our Sieve we spin!'
      Far and few, far and few,
            Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
      Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
            And they went to sea in a Sieve.

 

And all night long they sailed away;
  And when the sun went down,
They whistled and warbled a moony song
To the echoing sound of a coppery gong,
  In the shade of the mountains brown.
'O Timballo! How happy we are,
When we live in a Sieve and a crockery-jar,
And all night long in the moonlight pale,
We sail away with a pea-green sail,
  In the shade of the mountains brown!'
      Far and few, far and few,
            Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
      Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
            And they went to sea in a Sieve.

 

They sailed to the Western Sea, they did,
  To a land all covered with trees,
And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart,
And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart,
  And a hive of silvery Bees.
And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws,
And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws,
And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree,
  And no end of Stilton Cheese.
      Far and few, far and few,
            Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
      Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
            And they went to sea in a Sieve.

 

And in twenty years they all came back,
  In twenty years or more,
And every one said, 'How tall they've grown!
For they've been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone,
  And the hills of the Chankly Bore!'
And they drank their health, and gave them a feast
Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast;
And every one said, 'If we only live,
We too will go to sea in a Sieve,---
  To the hills of the Chankly Bore!'
      Far and few, far and few,
            Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
      Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
            And they went to sea in a Sieve.

By Edward Lear

                       CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Link back to the tour on Sans Souci's page

I don't know how it's been for you but I've been getting a lot of invites from people who claim to know me recently. Some of them say "Please don't say you've forgotten me" or "Remember all those conversations we used to have about "X,Y and Z". Others are from virtual itinerant preachers who want to add me to their flock with nothing interesting to say on their blogs or just blank pages with three or four contacts on them. The latter two are easy to deal with right away. The firs two take a bit of thinking about, as they are often friends of friends or friends of friends of friends of mine. Usually I don't mind adding friends of friends, but these messages reminding me about things about which I have no recollection and which probably didn't happen as I rarely visit blogs outside my contact list seem a tad too manipulative. In the end I delete them. They aren't funny or clever, and I just don't see the point.


This started off as just a gripe by me, but seeing all the comments I've changed the title.

I've been up since 3.15 am. My stomach is telling me to go raid the fridge. My brain's telling me to find something else to do. Sleeping doesn't seem to be happening so I'll do this thrilling blog instead.

I've had a gripe on MUDS because for the last week, whenever I signed out I got these ads on the sign out page, mainly for the Scientology Video Channel, but sometimes for flights to the Philippines. I was peeved, since I'd paid for a Premium account which promised no ads, but here were the same ads I would have got a a free user somehow suddenly following me even after I had signed out.

Seeing other users' comments was helpful as some were getting the same ads, others weren't, some were using ad-blockers and couldn't see them, others said they weren't and still couldn't see them and so on. Anyway I had one of those waking up lucid moments earlier on and started checking my security system (AVG: brilliant but no ad-blocker there), Google and Mutiply  toolbar options and Firefox options for ad-blocking. Any pop-up blockers were all enabled.

I can sense you're getting really excited now in a seat-gripping sort of way, so I shan't keep you in suspense any more. As I was googling ad-blocking, I came across a site explaining that your pop-up blocker is not an ad-blocker. I thought I knew that but it had slipped my mind. Then I found a Firefox link on ad-blocking and pop-up blocking. To ad-block as opposed to pop-up block in Firefox you need to install a separate add-on which takes about five seconds. Then you select the country whose ads you want to block. I chose USA because that's where Multiply is based.

Here's the link to the add-on:

Firefox AdBlock Plus 0.7.5.5
 
I think mine disappeared during a Firefox update I had last week, so you might want to check your own settings again.