What you get after two weeks of rain.

For the last two weeks (not this week thankfully) we've had nothing but rain. It was OK at first. You know how it is. The rain's so refreshing, stuff like that. But there comes a time when you just want a day of SUN. Not rain. Sun.

But week got two weeks of rain/muggy/cloudy weather.

One other thing we got a lot of is mushrooms. HUGE mushrooms, as you can see, as big as my hand. Well enjoy the pictures.

Gutless Disgrace

Recent consternation about incivility in politics is lost on me. I’m thinking our politicians are much too polite. Our early leaders often worked out differences fighting duels. President Andrew Jackson took office with two bullets still in his body. Vice President Aaron Burr shot former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. There’s a place for diplomacy, certainly, but too much isn’t good and we’re way over the limit.

It’s hard to stay quiet and be “polite” while listening to someone lie. It’s impossible if one must work with the person or live with him. The most diplomatic we should get is talking to him privately after - and we should only do that once. If there’s a next time, we must confront publicly. To sit quiet is to abet deceit and silence implies assent. Lying - when everyone in the room knows it - challenges us. If we don’t react, what are we?

Which brings us to the United Nations. It started off well back in 1945, dealing seriously with problems in Cyprus, Israel and Korea, but the UN today is useless. North Korea has ignored every UN resolution since 1993 while it built nuclear weapons and ICBMs - and it’s led by a nut-case. Meanwhile, Israel is forced to defend itself against Iranian terrorist puppets Hezbollah and Hamas, which rockets Israel daily. Iran ignores UN resolutions, lies to the world about building nuclear weapons, develops long-range missiles with North Korea’s help, denies the Holocaust, then promises to perpetrate another one by repeatedly threatening to wipe Israel off the map. What good is the UN?

In the face of all this, President Obama gave a speech filled with naive cliches like “No nation can or should try to dominate another nation.” What? Has he ever opened a history book? Ask Poland, Czechoslovakia or Hungary if a nation can try to dominate another nation. Ask Tibet. Ask Georgia. Ask Ukraine. Nobody is going to argue about the “should” part, but the can part? Who is going to stop them? The United Nations? Don’t make me laugh. I thought this guy was supposed to be smart.


Obama was followed at the podium by Libyan President Moammar Ghadafy, who - and I’m not making this up - tried to pitch a Bedouin tent on Donald Trump’s lawn the night before. After complaints from neighbors, he was kicked out by code enforcement officers. This is the guy who ordered one of his minions to hijack and blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland killing 139 Americans, then gave a hero’s welcome to the conspirator in Tripoli a only weeks ago after he was inexplicably released by the Scots. In his 96-minute diatribe, Ghadafy had the gall to say: “It should not be called the [UN] Security Council, it should be called the ‘terror council.’”

Diplomats listened politely.

Evidently, he was pleased by Obama’s remarks because he kept referring to him as “our son” and said, “We are content and happy if Obama can stay forever as a President of United States of America.” So are Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and Vladimir Putin. It’s the American people who are nervous about him.

Ahmadinejad spewed his lies that night.

The next day, President Obama chaired the UN Security Council and said he envisioned a world without nuclear weapons. What? Last week, he scrapped the anti-missile system planned for Poland and the Czech Republic - knowing Iran had recently launched a satellite into space with a missile that can double as an ICBM. He also knew that Iran has built a second uranium processing plant and is close to making a nuclear weapon. Poland and the Czechs accused Obama of selling them out. Envisioning a world without nuclear weapons is fine if you’re some kind of mystic, but Obama is our commander-in-chief. We rely on his judgement for our security, even our very existence, in a dangerous world.

After listening to Obama’s remarks, French President Sarkozy said: “President Obama dreams of a world without [nuclear] weapons . . . but right in front of us are two countries doing the exact opposite. . . . We live in the real world, not the virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions.”

You know it’s bad when the President of the United States has to be lectured by the president of France about courage.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s turn came next. To the UN General Assembly - most of whom sat politely through speeches by terrorist murderers Ghadafy and Ahmadinejad - Netanyahu said: “. . . to those who gave [Ahmadinejad] a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency? . . . a mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies the murder of six million Jews while promising to wipe out the state of Israel? What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations.”

Now, to save itself, Israel must confront Iran alone because the UN doesn’t have the guts to do it, and neither does our president. It’s time to quit this useless organization and kick them out of New York City. Let them practice their “civility” somewhere else.

Meanwhile, let’s look around for another Andrew Jackson.

The Case for Crown Courts, Squirrels and Being a Nurse

Apart from having to pay £8.50 for a glass of an ordinary red wine at a hotel this week, one of the many strange and unusual things to have happened to me was to find myself on the other side of the Bench in Court, giving evidence at a Crown Court Case.

It was a day of much waiting around, where jovial conversations eventually dry up and you can’t remember how you managed to get into the position in the first place. The conduct of the case was interesting. When I was finally called it was to be asked a series of questions that focused on a very narrow aspect of my relationship and involvement with the individual in the dock. Clearly the barrister had a strategy he was following, and the information I gave, limited and sharply focused as it was, was aimed at him realizing this. I felt as if I was simply a means to an end – and this was, for me, an uncomfortable feeling.

I believe that as nurses we are trained and educated to take on board a wide range of information as we work with others in helping them to help themselves. We listen to what is said, and hopefully also consider what is not said. We watch and observe, we comfort and we suggest. We give individuals room to express their feelings and hopes, and find ways to contain anxieties. We provide a shoulder to lean upon – both physically and metaphorically, and in a general sense we are at our best when we are able to be there for our patients. We do all of this because we learn to become good at ‘doing’ nursing as well as ‘being’ a nurse.

I emphasized these thoughts in my welcome address to all our new students when I greeted them last week. Like many Schools in the University, we had a bumper number of students starting their studies with us. Whilst this large number of student’s poses many challenges for us as educators, it was also reassuring to see so many people, of different ages and backgrounds who wanted to become a nurse. Of course, I know that some will quickly change their mind, and do so for a variety of reasons, some of which we will understand easier than others, but I thought such a large number was a good endorsement of how far nurses have come as a profession.

This brings me to a further strange or rather sad thing to have happened to me this week. I and many other colleagues from practice and education, met with the CNO for England to get an up-date report on a range of ongoing issues currently affecting the profession. Meeting with Chris Beasley was not strange, indeed she was in a feisty and confident mood, and very inspirational, no it was a report from a public focus group undertaken as part of the Prime Ministers Consultation that disturbed me.

The outcomes of this data collection and analysis revealed a much distorted view of nurses being shared across a wide and diverse representative group of the general public. People were reported to have been very surprised that nurses were educated to degree level, that they could be autonomous practitioners, prescribe medication and didn’t need to wait for a doctor to tell them what to do before intervening! I found it strange that such stereotypical views still exist yet the opportunity of becoming a nurse was still demonstrably a very attractive choice, if the numbers starting their education and training with us was anything to go by.

Finally, two story’s about hands, one about biting the hand that feeds, and the other about the hand that cares. The first story is about being attacked (twice) by a very angry squirrel. I have many mature trees and bushes surrounding my house. There is a large colony of grey squirrels that live in these trees, and indeed, for much of the time I enjoy watching them scamper and climb around. They get porridge oats and monkey nuts every morning. So I was very surprised to be attacked by one of these little fellows – and it was a determined attack too. He really was tenacious in his attack (of me and my car). I was eventually able to drive him away and can only suppose the poor little thing was ill as they normally steer clear of any contact with humans. So of course having driven him away I immediately felt guilty that I was unable to do more to help.

The second story was the sight of a nurse comforting one of the children involved in the dreadful accident in Suffolk. As the TV commentator’s spoke of the accident an off duty nurse could be seen gently stroking the child’s hand and arm. Perhaps sometimes we forget the power of touch in our work.

Its Not Easy Being Green...

So.... " Wicked! " was, well, wicked. It was great. Amazing. Thrillifying, as the would say in Ozzian. And my mother enjoyed it too, which was a relief because i wasnt sure it would be her exact cup of tea. And i think my bubba enjoyed it because the entire way through the second half i was being kicked. Actually, i'd heard of a study that babies in the womb, when played music, will react most ot classical, so i suppose a musical like " Wicked! " almost falls into that category.

I wont give away details for those who havent seen it but suffice to say i totally recommend you get yourself some tickets when you can. I can also say that you will probably spend a good proportion of the first half disliking one of the main characters ( although i wont say who ). Oh - and " Defying Gravity " will absolutely blow your socks off. Which is a good thing.

What else did we get up to on our little roadtrip ? Baby furniture shopping - and it wasnt successful at all. Now i'm not going to be one these fussy mums who only wants brand name, expensive furniture or baby clothes or whatever, but the one thing i have my mind set on is getting a nice, quality, baby change table. You can get the standard baby change table, which is a plastic three tier trolley - kind of like a food service trolley, only plastic-er - but i'd like to get a change table that acts as a peice of furniture. Wooden, white , with three or four drawers, so thatw hen your finished using the top as a change area, the whole thing just becomes a chest of drawers for the little one's room. And do you think i could find one in my price change ? Uh.... nuh. The least expensive one i could find was still priced oat over $500 and i just cant afford to be spending that on ONE thing.

Let see: we've already bought a pram, but we still have: change table, cot and car seat to go, not too mention all the little stuff. So $500 on one item is a bit much when Mr Gil and i are trying to stick to a budget. Good news we may have found an alternative to the baby change table - a regular chest of drawers that i can put a change mat on top of - so that may be another item to be ticked off the list.....

In Loving Memory...

Alla Elizabeth "Lib" Beard. March 17, 1921- September 24, 2009

I love and miss you so much Aunt Lib.

Land of the Free

Constitution Day was approaching and I’d gotten a memo encouraging teachers to recognize it in some way. It was to be observed exactly a week after Andrew Breitbart broke the ACORN scandal on his brand new web site: BigGovernment.com. I’m charged with teaching US History since 1900, weaving in civics, economics, geography and current events, so I try to include as many of those themes as possible when planning lessons.

“Open your books to page 872,” I said. “This is the US Constitution - the supreme law of the land, our design for government. Whenever you say ‘This is a free country,’ you are correct only because of this document.”

Then I explained how Congress is divided into two parts with each state getting two senators and House members according to how many people they have. “Look down to the bottom of the page where it says Article I, Section 2, number 3. I’d like somebody to read that part while the rest follow along.”

A girl volunteered. “‘Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this Union,” she read, “according to their respective numbers. The actual enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct.’”

After thanking her, I explained that Congress directed the Commerce Department to conduct a census - count everybody - every ten years, and they had contracted with an organization called ACORN (Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) to do much of the work.

“However,” I said, “ACORN is in trouble.” I showed them video from BigGovernment.com in which a young man of 25 and a young woman of 20 posed as a pimp and a prostitute, respectively, and were getting help from ACORN officials in Baltimore to help them set up house of prostitution with underaged, illegal-alien girls. I explained what a prostitute and a pimp were, although they seemed to know already. “ACORN says it has fired the two women in the video [who were helping]” I explained, “claiming it was an isolated incident.”

The next day, BigGovernment.com released another video of the same young people getting help from ACORN officials in Washington, DC. I showed them that one too. “ACORN fired them also. This huge organization has received more than $50 million in taxpayer money to help people get housing and other things and are supposed to receive up to $8.5 billion as part of President Obama’s stimulus bill. President Obama worked for ACORN when he was a lawyer in Chicago, and his campaign paid them at least $800,000 last year to help get people out to vote for him. This is very embarrassing.”

Over the weekend, a huge crowd gathered in Washington, DC to protest what the president and Congress have been doing lately, and what they are planning - including changes in how Americans get healthcare. BigGovernment.com released still another videotape showing ACORN officials in New York City offering to help the same two young people set up a house of prostitution and avoid paying taxes. After showing them that video and images of the demonstration, I told them the US Census Bureau had fired ACORN.

“James O’Keefe, 25, and Hannah Giles, 20 - not much older than you are - have embarrassed the president and shaken up government. Where do they get the right to do that?” I asked, knowing their English teacher had recently given them a copy of the Bill of Rights with a writing assignment.

“The First Amendment,” said a boy.

“Good,” I said. “What in the First Amendment gives them that right?”

“Freedom of speech,” he said.

“Very good. James and Hannah believed ACORN was a corrupt organization and set out to prove it. Big TV networks and newpapers ignored what they found but Andrew Breitbart gave them publicity on his web site and Fox News picked it up. That publicity is forcing government to act.

“Turn to page 884 and follow along while I recite Amendment One: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.’”

“That last right is what a million people exercised Saturday outside the White House and the Capitol Building where Congress meets - peaceably assembling and petitioning government with their grievances.” I pointed out that people in Iran were speaking and marching against their government too, but they were being gassed, beaten and shot. Iran doesn’t have a Constitution like ours.

On Monday and Tuesday, I showed them two more videos BigGovernment.com released showing ACORN officials in two California cities helping James and Hannah, and reported that the US Senate and the US House both voted overwhelmingly to cut off federal money to ACORN.

“These are example of what people - even very young people - have freedom to do under the US Constitution,” I said.

I'm Off To The Land Of Oz

Yes, the moment is finally here - i am finally getting to see " Wicked! " tonight. To those of you who are not into musicals that probably doesnt mean much, but if you take into account that i tried to get tickets almost 5 yrs ago when i was in NYC and am only now just succeeding in that aim well...... thats a long wait. 5 years is a long wait for anything really. But the wait is over - my mother and i are roadtripping 6 hours ( probably longer when you add in all the toilet breaks my pregnant bladder will need.... ) down to Sydney to see the show tonight, and will be roadtripping it right back tomorrow.

6 hours you say ? WTF ? Here in Australia ( or at least where i come from ) a 6 hr roadtrip for an overnight event isnt really all that long - we do it all the time - and even if it were, i'm thinking this roadtrip will be well worth it. I have heard such great things about " Wicked! " the musical, and i read the original " Wicked! " novel by Gregory Macguire about 7 years ago, so i'm pretty confident i'm going to love it. So much so that i will probably buy the soundtrack.

Which means i can swap all the songs from " Rent " that have been floating around in my head the past two weeks for soaring ballads about witches and wizards and being green....

Station Waiting rooms, the PM’s Commission on Nursing and a Chance of Stardom lost.

The past week was a whirlwind of train journeys; frantic emails from often distraught others, frenetic walks back and forth across campus and being witness to surreal and metaphysical musings by a former Secretary of State for Health. Monday started early with meetings with colleagues looking at the changes a foot in Midwifery, Phd’s and Strategic Planning. At 10am I got to meet one of the groups of students who have just completed their studies with us. This was an interesting meeting, which allowed me to hear from the students how they had experienced being with us. Whilst there was much spoken of what we might have done better, it was also great to hear of those areas where the student experience had been good. Then it was on to a meeting to hear some suggestions for a project that looked at different ways of working with those people who were homeless and living on the streets of Manchester and Salford. It was a humbling meeting to be confronted with tales of continued stigma and tales of such unwillingness to accept there was even an issue in a modern city like Manchester. The discussion provided an uncomfortable juxtaposition of certainty and uncertainty over my emotional location with the media city zeitgeist I am also a part of.

An extraordinary meeting of Senate followed, with challenging decisions being taken over future assessment processes for students. After a brief interlude that was the University Research Strategy Implementation meeting, it was off to meet participants in this years Education in a Challenging Environment. The setting was perfect, the Salford Museum and Art Gallery, and the company excellent. By all accounts the conference turned out to be a great success. Well done to all those involved.

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent at the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement with a group of other invited senior nurses from education and practice, many of whom were old friends and/or friends who were becoming old. This is not meant to be a flippant remark, but one that raises where such experience will be found once this group move on and retire. I was left wondering whether I was doing enough to mentor others so that they too might have the opportunity and motivation to influence and lead the future development of nursing. This was an underlying theme to the meeting as the two days were spent, amongst other things, looking at the progress to date of the work of the Prime Ministers Commission on Nursing – a feedback report is due out in the next few weeks, so I am unable to say too much here, BUT I was struck by the certain thought that we as individual nurses, as communities of practitioners needed to become a great deal more assertive. If we fail to do this, we will fail nurses everywhere. There are enormous opportunities to get our collective voice heard. If we don’t seize these opportunities then we our voice will be drowned out in the cacophony of sound that results from ill-informed perceptions, selfish and territorial professional attacks aimed at protecting and defending power and autonomy across the health and social care professions. Is it only me that thinks the observations and calls from the medical profession are becoming ever more strident and worried about what it is the nurse of the future might be engaged in, or more particularly how such activities might erode the medical hegemony. I heard a medical colleague lead a debate at a dinner party the other week where one doctor railed against the very concept of Nurse Led Services, and longed for the days where he knew what his nurses did on his Ward. Perhaps we gave ground too easily in our response to the implications of the European Working Time directive.

Part of the time during these two days was also given over to exploring the value of Experience Based Design (of health care services). This was an area very close to my own research interests, and of course is a major part of the Whole School Project approach. What was also interesting for me was the uncomplicated way non-academics described the process they were engaged in. Not for them the debates around the merit or other wise of ethnomethodology, for me, the conceptual rubric in use, but a straightforward and uncomplicated explanation - we go out, talk, observe, and then share with those same people what it is we found in trying to find explanations and possible new ways forward – very refreshing.

Thursday was a great celebration and showcasing of how far colleagues across the University had come in working together to grow our expertise as researchers. The energy and innovation was wonderful, and when the presentations are put on-line, I urge you to have a look at the many examples presented. It is worth considering that for every one example presented on the day there were at least three or four other examples of collaboration that did not get mentioned. It was a stocktaking opportunity that revealed a potentially bright future for research at Salford. When I got home that night and looked at my emails there was one from Jennie my ever present and superbly effective PA, reminding me there was a film crew arriving at 8am to film some footage for a forthcoming University DVD. I was at my desk at 6.30am, hair under control, newly dried cleaned suit on, looking good even if I say so myself (apparently earlier that week, in a poll to judge the best dressed male in the School, I had come third).

You can imagine my surprise when the film crew eventually arrived only to ask where these dolls and dummies were that they had to film? Cruelly, in what had been a long week, my chance of stardom slipped quickly and quietly away as I humbly showed the film crew the skills lab. As it happened, the day turned out OK, and colleagues and I able to appoint two highly respected and gifted colleagues to part time research fellow posts within the School. Perhaps in dosing so we were, in a small way able perhaps reverse the growing trend of losing experience and knowledge from the intellectual crucible of nurse education noted above.

And the Station Waiting room, Ah, well, I was patiently waiting in the business lounge at Coventry Station, reading the paper, sipping pretty good coffee, when the door at the rear of the room burst open, and two completely incognito plain clothes policemen rushed in followed by an entourage of what looked like blond bright young things, male and female, who fussed around a ruddy and somewhat familiar face. It was, I realized, none other than Alan Johnson (MP), the former Secretary of State of Health and now the Secretary of State for the Home Department.

I maybe wrong but I don’t think the current Government has set up a ministry to assist MPs to more carefully spend their expenses at John Lewis’s so the Department must mean something else.

I resisted the temptation to engage in conversation around the current state of the NHS and what might have brought us to where we are today. So I returned to my news paper with just one eye and ear tuned to what was going on. Whilst Alan Johnson’s stay in the lounge was only ever going to be brief there was an opportunity for refreshment, and he did get up to make himself a cup of tea from the grand looking coffee maker. After a few minutes of fussing, much noise, steam and no cup of tea he was heard to ask as if in wonder, ‘what am I doing here’ – to which one of his young aides earnestly asked, ‘if this was a literal or philosophical question’. As astute readers I can leave you to make your own minds up – but for me the question neatly summed up the State of British politics’ right now.

Its Real - and Its Hilariously Scary....

I dont mean to alarm you but.... i'm getting dumber by the minute. Its ok, i have an excuse, but its the excuse itself thats the scary part. All the females reading this may want to sit down for this part but..... baby brain is REAL.

Yes, sadly, i have discovered that old chesnut - that a baby eats your brains cells, effectively making pregnant women stupider - is true. Ok, technically they dont eat your brain cells, but studies have concluded that a womens brain does shrink whilst she is pregnant, a phenomenon commonly known as " baby brain ". Baby brain causes the lucky lady to forget basic things, get all clumsy, and basically make silly, simple little mistakes, the likes of which may cause her embarrasment but will give her family, friends and colleagues hours of laughter.

Case in point: me. Yesterday i had a run of little things, today one big oopsie. See:

* Went to work 20 minutes early so that i could write a letter to a charity. I got out all my details, put them on the coffee table next to my bag... and promptly left them there. So i got to work 20 minutes early for nothing.
* I noticed a discrepancy on my banking reconcilation for the day before. Seeing a payment had been missed i went back in and put the payment on.... but i put it on as the wrong payment type ( cash instead of credit ) so i still ended up with a discrepancy.
* Wrote up said banking and trotted myself off to the bank... where, once the bank teller opened up the bank book i realised i had only written up the cash, not the cheques, nor the deposit total, and i hadnt signed the deposit slip.
* I told Mr Gil i would stop and pick him up an application form for some casual work.... and drove straight home from work without picking up a damn thing.
And the big one....
* This morning i got prepared myself a mid morning snack to take to work, put the rest of the snack ingredients back in the fridge.... and then left for work with the fridge door wide open. Yes, i almost spoiled a whole fridges worth of food. Luckily it is only 4 hours between when i start and when i come home for lunch, so i was able to save everything before it went off. All except MR Gils deli meat for his sandwiches... looks like peanut butter for him tomorrow.

And so - if the quality of the writing on this blog should slip, should i leave a comment on your blog that makes no sense at all, or i generally disappear from the blog world ( because i have forgotten about blogging )..... please forgive me. I suffer from baby brain.

Had Enough Yet?

How many people protested Obamacare in Washington last Saturday? Twenty thousand? A hundred thousand? A million? Two million? The Washington Post said there were “tens of thousands.” So did the New York Times. They got the memo from Democrat leaders worried that if 1-2 million showed up it would be a major PR victory for the right, so they did what they could to play numbers down. The UK’s Daily Mail said there were up to 2 million protesters there.

Watching the demonstration on C-SPAN, I was struck by who I was seeing. They looked like ordinary men and women 40-70 years old, some younger, some older, but they didn’t look like demonstrators I’ve seen there for decades. There were no dreadlocked anarchists, no angry minorities, no fat feminists, no flamboyant homosexuals. These were efficient, mind-your-own-business people who quietly keep everything running while others demand favors from government. I wondered what caused them to make signs and journey to Washington in huge numbers. Something’s happening out there. Something different. Something big.

The only thing these people want from government is to be left alone. While liberal baby boomers waxed nostalgic over Woodstock last month, they went to town hall meetings to question their congressmen and senators, worried that their government planned to take away their health insurance plans and force them into a government-controlled system. Unlike their hippie contemporaries, they didn’t go to Woodstock forty years ago to smoke weed and frolic naked in the mud. They went to work instead - bagging groceries, banging nails, mowing lawns, and saving money for their future.

Though Obama, Pelosi and Reid continue to deny it, they know government would ration their health care when they get older. They know a younger gangbanger or illegal immigrant would get treated before they would when they were 65, 75, or 85 even though they’re the ones who pay the bills. They know Obama lied in his speech last week when he said his alleged reforms “would not apply to those who are here illegally.” When they heard Congressman Joe Wilson shout back “You lie!” they jumped up in front of their television sets and cheered him.

As part of its effort to demonize Congressman Wilson, CNN sent a reporter to the demonstration, but it backfired. Marchers didn’t trust CNN and wouldn’t be used as stooges for left-wing propaganda, so they gathered behind the reporter and shouted “Tell the truth!” over and over. The anchor back in Atlanta was exasperated when her reporter in the field said: “There are people who very strongly support Congressman Joe Wilson - and many of them are right here.”

They were there all right - over a million of them - and they don’t get their news from CNN and the other alphabet networks. They get it online and from talk radio because the mainstream media doesn’t have complete control of news anymore.

These are people who know they’ve been paying higher premiums on their private health insurance plans for years because hospitals charge them more for health care. They haven’t liked it, but they’ve paid anyway. They pay because they know hospitals cannot otherwise function when government pays much less than it costs to deliver health care to poor and elderly patients on Medicaid and Medicare.

These are people who pay on both ends - with their taxes and with their premiums. They know that if Obamacare passes with a “public option,” the private health insurance they’ve been paying for will disappear and they won’t have any more choices. Government will decide what health care they get - and don’t get.

These are people who have been planning for their retirement while others have been living fast and loose. They know they can’t depend on Social Security or any other government program. They watched the “War on Poverty” waste trillions and paid the taxes that financed it. They watched their money go down the drain while they worked in PTAs, Scouts, Rotary clubs and churches without government assistance. They are the real community organizers - quite unlike the government-funded ACORN (Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) types caught last week scheming to fund child prostitution with taxpayer money in Baltimore, Washington, DC, New York City and San Bernardino. Because President Obama did legal work for ACORN, CNN and the alphabet networks continue to ignore the story. Demonstrators, however, know about it anyway.

These people are the ants who worked, who took care of themselves, who laid up food for the winter while their grasshopper contemporaries flitted about “finding themselves” at Grateful Dead concerts and the like. Now they’re envisioning their old age as government would force it upon them, not as they planned it and worked for it all their whole lives. Obamacare is the final straw for them. These people have had enough - and there are millions of them.

Is It Just Me .....

.... or is Kanye West a total douche bag ? Hell, is Kanye West one of the biggest douche bags of all time? Its not enough that the man wears shutter shades* or that he throws tantrums when he himself misses out on an award, but now he goes and makes a ruckus when someone else loses out. Which is fine - as long as you dont do it onstage after hijacking the microphone, denying the actual winner her moment. Blog about, have a whinge on Twitter - but for God's sake, dont steal the limelight from a mild mannered teenage girl.

I am, of course referring to the ugly incident with the aforementioned Kanye and poor little Taylor Swift.

The douche in action.

Now, i know some of you arent that enamoured with Taylor Swift ( i, however, am a fan ) but even if you arent all that in love with her music, you have to pay her dues. She worked hard, she filmed a video clip, and she was deemed to have won. Taylor should be allowed to have her moment. Like she said, it was her first Moonman - that should be a special moment in any young singer-songwriters life. ( NOTE: I am yet to win a Moonman. DOUBLE NOTE: I am also not a singer-songwriter ). So i can understand how she ( supposedly ) went backstage and cried her poor little eyes out. Some dickhead rushed the stage, stole her microphone, and stole her moment. Biatch!

Thank God Beyonce has some class - despite what her video clip attire would suggest - and gave Taylor some time to shine.

The only question i am now left to ponder - who's the bigger idiot ? Kanye West or Lady Gaga ?

Clogs, ladders, Witch-hazel and Making it Better.

This week has been a painful one. Last Sunday while up a ladder trimming a tree, I slipped out of my clogs, fell 15 feet to the ground, pulling the ladder down on top of me. The result was that whilst I hadn’t ‘popped my clogs’ I ended up being severely bruised, covered in grazes, and feeling very foolish. My youngest daughter, who had witnessed the accident, was so annoyed that she missed capturing the fall on camera (apparently its possible to sell such mishaps to the TV for a few hundred pounds) that she returned to bed. My dear wife’s best offer was to dab the afflicted areas with Witch-Hazel. Interestingly the areas which did not have the Witch Hazel applied to them, bruised more vividly, but were far less painful than those areas treated. Here the bruises didn’t come out as well but the area remained painful longer.

The incident stayed with all through the week. I endured a week of stiff limbs, multi colored bruising, scabbed over grazes and still have to finish trimming the tree. I was still very sore on Friday, when I attended a very interesting meeting of educationalists, service providers and colleagues from the NHS North West. The meeting was aimed at reviewing achievements to date with the implementation of the Making it Better initiative – this is an initiative aimed at improving Children’s, neo-natal and Maternity services – and much had clearly been achieved. What made the meeting interesting was two interrelated issues: the first was that the initiative was predicated upon the notion of shifting services closer to home and preferably into the home, and the other was the realization that we may not be any longer training and educating nurses to work effectively in these new service provisions. Like the use of Witch-Hazel on my bruises, I wasn’t very sure what the evidence base was for this shift in service provision, although everyone seemed to agree it was a good thing. The question as to how well we were educating and training nurses for these new service models was challenging. Already, parents of children with long term conditions were being trained as to how to make interventions that allegedly nurse fresh out of training would not be able to do – it was the fitness for practice and purpose argument writ large.

I did my training way back in the 1970s and then it was highly competitive. Trying to get to see everything that was contained in our red book (the precursor to today’s Passport), and to get each observation ticked off was what we lived for. Of course we could only see those problems that other people presented with. It took me a long time to shift my thinking from the problem (diagnosis) to the person sitting in front of me. At the meeting last Friday we talked about ‘neo-nates’, ‘trachies’, ‘pau’s’, ‘nicu’s’, ‘paeds’, so maybe nothing much has changed. Hmm, anyway, I was pleased to see a competency (yes its me being pleased to see a competency) that was about communication and understanding the other. Maybe there is hope we will change, and tall trees can look good as well.

Favor

Yesterday I got an e-mail from my youth minister asking for a "favor". He's doing a seminary and he needed some of his students to right an alphabetical list of attributes of God. I put what I sent below and a paragraph about the process of making the list.

A- Always there
B- Beginning and End
C- Creative
D- Deliverer
E- Everything
F- Father
G- Glorious
H- Happy
I- I AM
J- Jehovah
K- Kind
L- Living
M- My God
N- None Compare
O- Over all
P- Perfect
Q- Quality
R- Righteous
S- Satisfying
T- Trustworthy
U- Understanding
V- Victorious
W- Wise
X- Xanadu – it means beautiful or idyllic place, from the poem about Kabul Khan
Y- Yahweh
Z- Zenith- means the highest point or climax of something.

At first I really just started listing things. The first few were easy but as I went on they got harder and harder because there where so many good names and adjectives to choose from. X and Z where interesting. I just hit the letters X and Z on my computer dictionary and scrolled through to see what I could find. There wasn’t really any “God” terms within those letters but I find that the words and what they mean fit to what I find God to be. Even if I could write in every word that comes to mind for each of these letters it wouldn't even begin to cover just how much or what God it to me. This made me think.
Micah

That Cannot Even Make Sense....

What doesnt make sense ? This:

Just in the last week or so i have started to feel much heavier and quite ungainly at times - you know, like every other pregnant woman on the planet. However, i'm kind of worried that my bump is on the smallish side. As in, too small for my stage of pregnancy. Which is 22 weeks ( 23 on Monday ).

So how can it make sense that i feel heavier and awkward and ungainly - but i also feel too small ?

Good question, yea ? Answers anybody ? No, okay, maybe i'll just ask my obstetrician on Tuesday......

Boys and Forts

One of my favorite things as a boy was building “forts” in the woods with other boys. Not sure now why we called them forts because they were not fortified in any way. They were structures we liked to go into and just sit. If they were in trees, they were “tree forts.” If they were holes in the ground with boards over them covered with dirt, leaves and pine needles, they were “underground forts.” The ones we built in wintertime were “snow forts.” None of us ever thought to question the label.

I suspect we boys were biologically programmed to build forts and were happiest doing so, just as Labrador Retrievers are happiest when they’re retrieving. Sitting in classrooms with teachers trying to program us to be “nice” like the girls would make us crazy. Building forts was not the only thing we did and I’m not sure where the notion came from. It was usually around this time of year - when summer was ending and school was beginning. I suspect it was instinctual. Cold weather was approaching and we felt like building a shelter, so we did.

We’d use available tools and materials. In suburban Boston during the fifties and sixties lots of houses going up, so we would prowl job sites and ask carpenters if we could have their scrap wood and bent nails and they always obliged. It was great fun to straighten out the nails, carry materials into the woods and start building. Tools we borrowed from our fathers, with permission or without. Hammers and saws were all we used really and the fathers were off to work all day so we would raid their workbenches. I'd borrow a hammer and saw and return them to the workbench before my father got home from work. Sometimes I’d forget though and leave them at the “fort.” If he should go looking for his tools that night and not find them, I’d be in trouble.

The numerous forts usually ended up getting wrecked by groups of older, bigger boys or boys from neighborhoods on the other side of a thousand-acre swamp. We’d journey to the site one day and find it destroyed, speculate on who may have done it, and plot revenge. If it was the boys across the woods, we’d seek alliances with older boys in our neighborhood for protection or retaliation.

My sisters and their friends played house close to home while we were building forts in the woods. Sometimes they’d rake pine needles into rows outlining rooms and make beds for their dolls. They were obeying their instincts too and got satisfaction from playing out their fantasies day after day. Often they’d try to entice us to play with them and pretend to be fathers in their “houses” but we weren’t interested. We’d only agree to when they blackmailed us. We’d play house with them for a limited time if they promised not to tell on us for something we did that they found out about.

As I reflect on it now, we were all playing out our inherent inclinations and there are corollaries in the larger human story. A concise description of human history might outline, for example, a series of periods when we built things, interspersed with periods when we wrecked what we’d built. If we extended the building periods and shortened the wrecking periods, it could be considered a measure of civilizational progress. Men generally built villages and cities while women bred, nurtured and maintained households in them. Men fortified their towns and cities and defended them, successfully or unsuccessfully, against assaults by other groups from other regions. Sometimes the assaults were preemptive attacks on potential enemies. Sometimes they were naked grabs for wealth and power. There were also occasions when men would seek alliances with other groups for defensive or offensive purposes.

It was similar with us boys and our forts. After a while they didn’t get wrecked very often, and that was probably because we were becoming the bigger boys, and the ones who had been the destroyers had grown up to discover cars and girls. Not too many years later, they settled down to play house for real.

Eventually, so did we.

Another Weekend By The Numbers

3 - number of kicks felt during a storm on Friday. This is significant because these were the first baby kicks i've been able to feel on the outside of my belly. I've been able to feel little butterfly-ery movements inside for a few weeks now, but the first belly kick i can feel from the outside ? Very special.

1 - christening attended. For my neice, B. She was too cute in her little christening dress with her fluffy hair.

5 - number of hours spent sitting in the sun after the christening. I'd say sitting in the sun drinking, but i wasnt. Everyone else was though - its so weird being the only sober person at a bbq or party.

100 - number of dollars spent on groceries for the week. Mr Gil decided to experiment: we went to a local green grocery for our fruit, the local bulk meat centre for our meat and bought the " rest " at the supermarket, to see if all that running around was less expensive than buying all the groceries in one place ( ah, that being the supermarket ). And it was! Around $30 cheaper in fact.

1500 - number of dollars we could potentially save for the year if we do our groceries the grocer/butcher/supermarket way. Thats the cost of a holiday right there!

6 - pieces of French toast i ate for Fathers Day lunch. I made them, so i figure i deserved an extra piece or two. I had originally planed French toast for breakfast, but Mr Gil was one of those people who spent 5 hrs drinking - so McDonalds egg and bacon McMuffins were on the menu instead.

60 - pages left until i finish the book i've been reading. And by " been reading " i mean i read the first 2 chapters about 3 weeks ago and read three quarters of the rest of it yesterday. In case your wondering which book it is: " A Harp in the South " by Ruth Park. Its an Australian classic that i'm pretty sure i read for school once, but its turning out to be much better than i remember it.

Robot Nurses and the Schizophenics, I don't think so!

What a week. We have management consultants telling us 1 in 10 health care workers will need to lose their jobs if the NHS is to achieve a balanced budget. My old friend and mentor Professor Joel Richman had some choice words to say about the NHS spending enormous sums of money on management consultants. I think he would have turned in his grave this week hearing the debate. Interestingly, The Times, this weekend was absolutely in his camp, claiming such profligacy was on a par with the payment of bankers bonuses. I agree, and I do get depressed about such blatant ‘let’s see what the punters think’ attitude to managing policy.

The other depressing occurrence this week was the BBC, (unfailingly it seems) referring to Peter Bryant as a ‘schizophrenic’. I hate this way of describing anyone. Despite what he may have done, and in no way dismissing the distress his actions have caused to others, he is suffering from a serious mental illness. He is not a label, and affliction, a disease. He is a person, albeit very troubled. I feel someone at the BBC needs to ask the question why, as a major news organization, they continue to persistently see only the illness and not the person.

My Mum has booked her first holiday on-line. This is maybe not a particularly newsworthy item on its own. However, this is a great leap forward in using new technology. Media City it’s not but its interesting how on the edge of becoming dependent upon others my parents have suddenly got a new lease of life that is predicated upon being independent.

Independence and dependence are such interrelated dynamics. Its something I wondered about when I first heard about the new Japanese invention – the Robot Nurse – this weekend. Having been concerned that we are educating out the essential emotionally of nursing the notion of a robot nurse is an anathema. It certainly made me think again about the huge investment we have made in our high fidelity manikins. In any event, if we need robot nurse who was it that thought it would be a good thing to give it the face of a Teddy Bear?

Feature Friday: Insomniatic Musings Child of the Month

Name: Olive Hoover

Age : 7 years old

Hometown: Alberqueque, New Mexico

You Know Her From Where ?: The film " Little Miss Sunshine ".

Reason for featuring: Because she is one of my favourite child film characters of the last few years. For starters - look how cute she is with her little teeth, and her chubby cheeks and her huge glasses. Seriously, those glasses could rival the specs i wore as a child, so anyone who can wear those and look so gosh darn cute is a-ok with me. But what i really love about her is her self confidence. If you havent seen " Little Miss Sunshine " ( why not ? Go rent it now! ) little Olive wants to win a beauty pageant, and her whole dysfunctional family take a road trip in effort to help her achieve that dream. Her father is a motivational speaker who cant sell a damn thing; her brother has taken a vow of silence; her grandfather is hilariously funny, but addicted to drugs; her uncle is a suicidal gay scholar; and her mum is trying to hold everyone together. And Olive ? She's just this little kid that likes to dance and 80's throwback sweats.

What i love is that Olive has no real idea that her family is so dysfunctional, and neither does she think of herself as awkward ( even though the massive glasses would, stereotypically, suggest " nerd " ). Nope, Olive is just a sweet, chubby, little girl with a dream - and a an awesome pageant coach/ junkie Grandpa who encourages it. The whole final dance scene at the pageant, and Olives attitude in the face of pageant judgery ( is that a word? it is now... ) just melts my heart.

So here's to Olive Hoover - to her big glasses, her old school sweatbands, her awesome choice of music, and her dysnfunctional family. A worthy recipient of Insomniatic Musings Child of the Month.

Kennedy Worship Syndrome

I’m not mourning Ted Kennedy any more than I did Michael Jackson, even though the rest of the western world went into orgies of keening. Born a Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrat, I was raised with KWS (Kennedy Worship Syndrome) but, unlike most, I got over it many years ago.

Ted’s brother John was elected president when was in the fourth grade at St. William’s School in Tewksbury, Massachusetts - about twenty miles outside of Boston. My teacher, Sister Charles Paul, talked endlessly about Senator Kennedy - then President Kennedy - all year. Three years hence I was upstairs in seventh grade with Sister Maureen Catherine when JFK was shot by a communist organizer in Dallas. We watched the classroom TV as Walter Cronkite told us he was dead. The girls cried. I was in shock.
My father next to JFK at NAGE meeting

My father had worked with then-Senator John Kennedy in the fifties when WWII vets formed a union that later became NAGE - National Association of Government Employees - now a subsidiary of the notorious SIEU (Service Employees International Union) providing thugs to disrupt congressional town meetings.

Ted Kennedy ran for the US Senate in 1962 when I was in fifth grade. His campaign motorcade went by St. William’s School while we were out at recess and pulled over. He got out to press the flesh and I threw a football to him, which he caught and tossed back. I threw it again, but he had looked away to shake hands and the ball hit him in the head, messing up his hair.

In summer of 1967, I attended a very spirited party on Martha’s Vineyard with some of Robert Kennedy’s children. The following June, I was getting ready for school when my mother told me Robert Kennedy had died in Los Angeles after being shot by a Palestinian activist while running for president.

I’ve since read every major biography of the Kennedy family. Most are by authors suffering from KWS like Doris Kearns Goodwin and Arthur Schlesinger. The three that infuenced me most, however, were The Kennedy Imprisonment by Garry Wills; Kennedys: An American Drama by Collier and Horowitz; and The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersch. These authors examined the family without glossing over the carbuncles, such as: Joseph P. Kennedy’s involvement with organized crime during Prohibition, his pro-Nazi sentiments as Ambassador to the Court of St. James, his obsessive philandering, his svengali-like control of his children, driving his sons to seek the presidency, fixing 1960 election results in Illinois, West Virginia and Louisiana, and so forth. Then there were JFK’s too-numerous-to-mention dalliances as congressman, senator and president. Hersch’s book was the most damning, depicting John and Robert as arrogant, brash, and playing fast and loose with civilization itself in their handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

For those who insist all this lacks significance when measured against the political achievements of the Kennedys, there’s Chappaquiddick. Ted, like his father and brothers, frolicked with countless women. Unlike them, he had a problem with alcohol, which made him sloppier. It’s one thing to drunkenly drive off a bridge with a young woman not your wife in the car. It’s quite another to slink off and leave her to drown while you’re trying to cover up the incident to preserve your political career. If he’d reported the incident right away as the law required, Mary Jo Kopechne would be alive today according to investigators. Whatever was left in me of Kennedy Worship Syndrome, it was thoroughly eliminated after reading Senatorial Privilege: The Chappaquiddick Coverup by Leo Damore. The Kennedy political machine, together with the Irish political mafia running Massachusetts at the time, gave Ted Kennedy a pass for what would have put anybody else in prison. Somehow kept his US Senate seat. Only in Massachusetts where KWS is epidemic could this have happened.

Hearing endlessly of Ted Kennedy’s legislative “achievements,” foremost in my mind is The 1965 Immigration Act, which opened the door for 20 million illegal immigrants now bankrupting our country. That was Ted’s baby. As I watch ordinary Americans revolt against socialized medicine, I think of Ted Kennedy.

When I hear of his “senatorial civility,” I remember how he baselessly savaged Robert Bork before the Senate Judiciary Committee declaring: “Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, children could not be taught about evolution.”

When I hear of his patriotism, I remember how he treasonously undercut President Reagan during the Cold War by offering a secret deal to Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov.

About the only positive thing about Ted Kennedy’s political career is when he ran in the primaries against an incumbent president from his own party, weakening Jimmy Carter and ushering in Ronald Reagan.

Now there’s talk of changing the law in Massachusetts to preserve the “Kennedy” senate seat by appointing nephew Joe Kennedy. You remember the former congressman who has been kissing up to Hugo Chavez the past few years? Joe calls them “our good friends in Venezuela.” With friends like that, who needs enemies?

I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but after last week, it’s pretty clear the mainstream media still suffers from KWS. As someone who recovered years ago, this Boston-Irish-Catholic-former Democrat had to get it out.

What Am I - A Ham Sandwich ?!?

Seriously - i'm about sick of my state manager, The Bell, pretending that i'm not here. That i dont exist. She must think that the more she ignores me, the sooner i'll go away.

And i will. On maternity leave. I just wont come back.

I know i'm raving a bit here, its just starting to become greatly annoying. I've never really liked The Bell anyway but the last few months of being given the cold shoulder is almost enough. Being that she's the state manager i had to inform her of my pregnancy and intention to take maternity leave. I did so when i was 10 weeks and she told me she would toss up a few ideas in regards to replacement staff and call me about the next week. That was 11 weeks ago and i havent heard dot from her since - unless of course i get in touch with her. She hasnt called me of her own volition at all. Consequently myself, J and the rest of our office colleagues are still in the dark about what will happen on my temporary leave.

I called The Bell again this past Friday, for probably the fourth time since our initial discussion, only to be told " Its arranged ". Literally - thats all she said. " Its arranged " and then she just kept on talking. She didnt elaborate on who was arranged, or what was arranged, or when it was arranged. Just arranged - and then she preceded to tell me i dont really need much time off before the baby arrives because all i do is sit down all day and besides she worked up until the Thursday and had her baby on the Friday. Good for you lady - seriously. It must make for a nice little story to tell about how brave you were and how hard you worked ( choke! ). I, on the other hand, would like a few weeks or a month to rest up, make it to all my doctors appointments without having to rush back to work, and to make all the last minute preparations for my little munchkin.

So - thats it. The Bell insists on telling me nothing but " its arranged ". Funnily enough our national sales manager ( remember, The Bell is only state manager ) has told J and myself that they will definately have someone or something in place and she will let us know when they've put it in place.

Which would suggest that The Bell is not only trying to ignore, but is also a liar aswell.