Mortality and NHS Efficiency.

Over the past couple of days I've been able to sample NHS efficiency first hand and I must say that in the area relating to strokes, at least in Portsmouth there is good news.

Yeah, get me, having a stroke, at 50. This is one milestone I'm not too happy to get to before my time.

But anyway, I must praise the team at Havant Day Service and at the QA Hospitals TIA clinic. I stepped into the day service reception at 10:00am Yesterday and got a slot at the TIA clinic by 3pm. I'd had my assessment, seen a specialist and had my appointments for today booked and also had my bloods taken by 4:30 when I left the hospital.

Today I had an MRI scan and had a vascular assessment done by lunchtime. Back up to the TIA clinic in the afternoon and confirmation that the loss of feeling I've experienced in my left hand is indeed the result of a mild stroke. Plus there's evidence of a couple more in the past that have gone unnoticed.

The longest wait seemed to be to get medication from the hospital pharmacy which took an hour. Medication, which cost me nearly £23! It shows how long its been since I needed to purchase a prescription, I'd forgotten you don't pay per prescription, but actually per item on the prescription. Maybe its the first drug cocktail I've ordered up and I've only previously had a single item on a script, but it does seems a tad excessive, given that scroungers and layabouts get it for free while I have to stump up over £7 every time the doctor adds a line to the script. Even my autistic son still has to pay for his prescription because DLA isn't an enabling benefit for free ones.

To my (now admittedly slightly flawed) mind, there's something wrong with telling someone they'll be on medication for the rest of their lives and then charging them for it.

Big thanks to the NHS team here in Portsmouth and Havant and for anyone in the locality wondering, the NHS seems to be working quite well.

Lady Thatcher's Death: End of an Era.

As much as I'd like to get riled up over Margaret Thatcher's death (after all I come from "Up North" so it should essentially be in my genes to hate her), I find I'm ambivalent.

Sure, She started a train of action that ultimately ended with the collossal crash of 2008, but really there were too many people in charge between her and that crash, that took full advantage of the gravy train she had started to pin the blame totally on her.

Although I was made redundant only months after she came to power in 1979 and started turning the screws on the economy, I made full advantage of the opportunities her government laid before me.

I spent less than a week on the dole, during which I was told I couldn't continue my day release course, even though it would eventually make me employable. So I went cleaning council loos for a living: not something someone employed in electronics should be doing, but I was willing to do any job in order to service my obligations and continue to pay my rent to my Mother and pay off the HP on my shiny new moped.

I did that for two years until things got better and I left to join one of the (by then) progressive government's training schemes. A fully paid scheme run by the National Computing Centre with no restrictions, open to anyone who could past the entrance tests that trained me in computer operations and then programming. A course that provided as many weeks theoretical training as it did on-the-job work experience. It was a godsend for someone without formal qualifications like me.

I left the course and although I was again unemployed for a while, I took full advantage of the time and earned beer money employing my old electronics skills repairing and modifying CB radios, which was enjoying a huge surge in popularity at the time.

That computer course proved invaluable as it provided me a stepping stone to earning a middle-income wage which allowed me to repay the government's investment several times over. It allowed me to raise a family, buy a house and eventually become self-employed as a contractor until Labour came to power in the late nineties and killed it all.

The thing is, Thatcher for all her faults played things straight. She gave us strong medicine when it was needed but she also soothed when we needed it with low taxes. She might have cost jobs with her policies, but her policies also gave back in training schemes. If you made the most of them, if you steered yourself in the direction the government wanted the country to go, then you gained an advantage.


Her downfall may have come sooner had the Labour party not been distracted by a bloody civil war, becoming a pantomime political party. In the end it only gained power when it presented a painted marxist in the form of Tony Blair with the leftist tendencies airbrushed out that even the far left could rally behind.

As much as she was the last great statesman this country had, she was also flawed. Her eventual downfall was to believe her own hype, to become bigger than she really was. The Poll Tax was a disaster. If she had listened and compromised sooner, she may have stayed in power, but instead she stuck to her guns far past the point of reason. On that and on Europe.

In the end it cost  her her political career and ushered in the corporate-funded professional politics we have today: all spin and no substance, jam tomorrow and nothing but promises for the poor. Her policies promoted freedom, whereas today's policies feel more like a straightjacket.

Her legacy will polarise opinion about her for decades to come. For those who took advantage of the good times, she will be a God, for those who stayed shackled to the past, she with be the spawn of Satan.

Todays Benefit Changes: Destined to Fail.

Right, where do I start regarding today's benefit changes?

Well, lets just take them as a lump and examine the effect they are supposed to have on the benefits bill and the movement of people on benefits into work.

First off, the target of making savings on the benefit bill. Well, on face value, you would expect a saving, because benefits are being reduced. However, nothing in government is ever as it seems. Someone will have to administer the changes. Whenever I hear the phrase "means-tested", I what I actually see is "job-creation-scheme". The government will fail to save the money they think they will principally because the cost of administering benefits will go up.

Its possible the cost will be moved from central government to local government, but essentially there will not be the saving the government are claiming.

All that will happen is the demand for one-bedroom flats will substantially increase. I predict a lot of stories of housing associations being pressured to put inappropriate tenants in sheltered housing for the elderly, for instance. After all, that's probably the biggest sector involved in single-bedroom housing stock. Either that or canny neighbours will start to take in each others children as lodgers, with the government paying the "landlords" rent bill.

For me its all smoke and mirrors. There's still no work being done to bridge the financial gap between welfare and work. We're spending huge amounts administering the child and work tax credits systems, when we could simply raise the threshold for income tax. I still find it obscene that those on the minimum wage pay tax. The first rung of the working ladder should be tax free, which would narrow the gap between welfare and work. Taking the bottom rung out of tax will reduce or eliminate the need for tax credits and reduce the administration bill.

That's the way you begin to save real money: by removing government from the equation all together.

Cyprus: The Pantomime Continues.

The Cypriot Government continues to debate how it can avoid political suicide by getting a bailout and not stealing bank savings to pay for it.

The most likely answer is they will take the bailout and hand over up to 30 percent of bank savings accounts over. At least there's a chance that they can blame the theft on the European Polictical elite and the ECB, they can argue that they had no other choice. It wasn't our fault, it was the ECB and Germany who did it... please vote for us again.

However it could be the pantomime being played out is a way of threatening the rest of Europe. For instance, what would happen if Cyprus didn't take the bailout?

They would probably drop out of the Euro and go back to the Cypriot pound, they would then regain mastery of their financial affairs, no longer shackled to Europe and their heinous demands.

Sure, savings in Cypriot banks would effectively devalue and the risk is they may devalue by the same amount the bailout would take. But then again, it may not.

The thing is, removed from the shackles of the Euro, Cyprus would be able to plan its own recovery, free from the demands of the Euro zone.

The danger for the Euro zone is that Cyprus recovers quicker and stronger than would have been the case had it stayed in the Euro.

But we all know that will never happen because the corrupting lure of the European Political elite, all the junkets, all the showmanship, is too addictive for them to ever contemplate leaving the Euro.

Last Chance Saloon for Freedom of Speech.

Make no mistake, yesterdays "deal" between the parties to regulate press freedom is the last chance we have of keeping any semblance of free speech.

I bit melodramatic? I don't think so, because the press are the only people with the money and the power to resist political interference. If they don't grow a set in the coming weeks and tell the political elite to do one, then the next tier of free speech they'll come after is us, the bloggers. Primarily Guido, but anyone else who has the connections to get information they don't want released and the ability to post it up in a public space.

So, here's a challenge to the currently "free" press: You have a job to do, are you going to to the easy thing and capitulate, or are you going to tell the political scumbags to fuck off?

Excepting the Guardian from the argument, who are as bad as the French for surrendering.

Daylight Robbery: Icing the Iceland Effect

Yep, I'm on about Cyprus, where the government have caved in to EU demands and effectively decided the thieve a percentage of every saver's bank account. When exactly governments were given the power to help themselves to saver's bank accounts I don't know, but it's a canny way of avoiding Cyprus "doing an Iceland" and telling the government and the banks to fuck off. Just steal part of the money needed to reduce the bail out.

Hopefully there will be full blown riots in Cyprus with the Police joining the rioters as everyone will be affected by the money-grab.

The Cypriot government is on very shaky ground.

And those in power in the rest of Europe will be watching very, very closely.

If it doesn't kick off royally in Cyprus expect daylight robbery to become a common tactic of any future bailout plan.

The people of Europe should take this as a shot across the bows from the political elite. They should respond in kind.

The State of The Economy.

The current coalition government has been in power for quite a while now and as we're now on the downhill leg and running towards the next election, I feel its timely to report on how I think things are going.

I did say before the election that should the Tories win, they should come clean with the electorate about how fucked the economy was, what needed to be done to rectify it and how hard it would be.

They did neither with any clarity, certainly not in any shape or form that the man in the street could understand. Without understanding or comprehension of the situation, high levels of taxation and the withdrawal of funding for services just appears vindictive and punitive. Without the public on your side, you won't be given the room to manoeuvre the economy to a better state. It also allows any opposition to nip at your heels constantly without them having to own up to being the reason the economy is so fucked up. "Blame the Banks" doesn't cover every eventuality and becomes really boring really quickly.

So it comes to pass we've had a few years of "austerity", things are still as bad as they ever worse and now we have lost our AAA rating due to the dip back into recession.

Basically the coalition have done about as bad a job of things they ever could have. They have done better than completely fucking the economy up, but the policy they put in place relied too much on external improvements and the global economy picking up. Their reputation for fiscal fortitude is trashed, the opposition is several points ahead in the polls thanks to the various coalition own goals..... the list goes on

Before the 2009 election I said the best thing that Labour could do was to recognise the mistakes they made and apologised for them. That would take the wind right out of the Tory sails. It seems they have recognised that sorry goes a long way even when you don't mean it and have made it their strategy and have started saying they got it wrong and apologising on a number of subjects.

The thought of the country-wrecking fuckers getting back in terrifies me, but given the incompetence of the current government it looks a very, very real prospect.