Could Liz Truss as PM See the End of Smart Motorways?

 Liz Truss is apparently on record as saying the smart motorway experiment has failed.

Those of us that are forced to drive cars that are slightly sub-par in the reliability dept. know the buttock clenching and clammy sweat that s-called smart motorways produce.

The idea that you have a refuge every half mile or mile would be okay if there wasn't so many things that could immobilise the vehicle immediately. For instance a bad cam or crank sensor will instantly disable the engine. Once stopped it will refuse to crank. 

It may not even be the sensor. There are so many computers in modern cars now that just a simple inability for one computer to communicate with another can cause the car to shut down. Then after that it's a mission to diagnose the fault.

For instance I recently had a problem (one among many) in the cheap Vauxhall Astra I bought earlier this year. The display kept coming up intermittently with "Service ESP" and the engine would lose power until the car ground to a halt. Rather than the ESP, it turned out to actually be the crank sensor that caused the problem. Within metres the car was stopped. Now given my usual perseverance, removing the key and trying to restart the car eventually got it going, until a couple of days later it steadfastly refused to start.

Had that happened on a smart motorway there would be no way I could make it to a refuge. I would be stuck on a live lane of the motorway. With all the inherent risks that involves.

Now, if the use of smart motorways changed and said that the left lane was to be used as a hard shoulder most of the time and then it would be opened up when the speed of traffic got to below (say) 30mph, then you could understand that would be a safer option. But opening up the left lane to traffic travelling at 70mph is just a recipe for disaster.

Hopefully Liz will see sense and  rather than dispense immediately with the billions spent so far on smart motorways, will do the smart thing and use them intelligently. Keep the left lane for broken down vehicles unless traffic builds up to the point it's safe to open the left lane to live traffic.

Teacher Sent to Jail for Not Agreeing to Use Correct Pronouns??

 Interesting case here: I’d rather stay in prison for a century than play by these transgender rules, says jailed teacher (msn.com)

The teacher has been sent to jail for contempt of court for turning up for work even though he'd had an injunction served on him, rather than actual misgendering, but I admire his principled stance. He's standing up for what he believes in.

I love how at the end of the article it quotes the school as saying "No one is being forced to do anything". But yet the teacher sits in jail until he complies. 

I find it interesting that a school has suspended a teacher for refusing to use preferred pronouns on a child he's not even teaching, but then resorts to the courts to stop him turning up for work. 

To be honest I'd just walk away and let the school sink in their woke morass, but that's just me. I guess he loved his job.

Global Container Shipping Costs About to Start to Come Down?

 On YouTube the channel "What is Going on With Shipping?" has reported that finally the queues of ships off the Wets coats of America and especially the port of Longbeach have finally started to reduce.

It's hopefully an indication that finally the post-pandemic pressures are about to ease. 

The demand for goods into the US from the Far East meant that Longbeach was one of the primary ports for receipt of goods because it was closest to China. Heading to Longbeach reduced the steaming times and allowed ships to turn round and head back quickly, even if they did have to queue up to get into the port.

Now according to the channel, container ships are spread more evenly across the US, including the East Coast, which is a indicator that the urgency isn't there any more: ships are now transiting to the nearest port to the recipient, rather than making a desperate dash to the nearest US port in dashing back to China.

They are also seeing a corresponding reduction in shipping rates now, as the pressure is easing. 

Hopefully those costs will start to eventually ease in Europe and go some way towards reducing inflation. Those cheap Chinese goods that became a bit more expensive should start to reduce in cost again. 

Also there should now be more capacity for bulk shipments to get into ports rather than the more lucrative containers. 

It's hopefully an indication that the inflationary cost of the pandemic is over.

Care Home Residents and blanket DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) Order During the Pandemic.

 I've blogged before about my wife's experiences in care homes during the pandemic. 

She noticed that DNRs were being written for residents of the various care homes she was managing at the time.

Over a year ago, this report in Learning Disability Today went some way to highlight the issue, but it doesn't delve deep enough. 

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that DNRs were being issued by GPs without the permission or giving notice to care providers or family members of residents. An illegal practice under article 8 of the Human Rights Act.

Let's be clear, during the pandemic it was a pretty dodgy time to get ill and be referred to hospital. The first thing that ambulance crews asked before scooping the patient up was "do they have a purple form" (DNR). 

That then set in motion the limitations of the medical response by the NHS. If you weren't lucky, the presence of the DNR allowed ambulance crews to refuse to take residents to hospital. Instead leaving them in the residence to effectively die, no matter how bad they got. 

If the resident was "lucky", then they would be admitted to hospital, but the presence of the DNR affected the level of care provided. Anecdotal evidence suggests that LD and elderly care home residents were only given minimal care while in hospital. 

Of course there's a chance that the resident survived despite the best efforts of the NHS to deny them care. 

In that case, you'd think that any hospital patient would get a Covid test before being released back to the care of the care home? Nope. The attitude of the NHS at the time appeared to be that they didn't care what happened after the resident had been released from Hospital. "Not their problem" I guess.

So residents, still infectious with Covid were released back to the care of the homes they came from. 

The savvy homes put in place infection control and isolation measures for any and all residents returning back from hospital, whether they presented with Covid or not. Those that weren't so savvy paid the price and had to deal with outbreaks in the home that could have been avoided had the proper measures been put in place.

After seeing the debacle unfolding in New York (thanks to brave YouTubers and Alt Media) and other houses  around the country decimated by Covid brought in from Hospitals, I'd discussed this at the beginning of the pandemic with the wife and I'd said the prudent thing to do would be to set up isolation measures for anyone leaving the protection of the home's "bubble".

Staff were LF tested on a daily basis and PCR tested weekly.

That was about as biologically secure as you could make a care home. 

But I digress. 

We were appalled at the real risks that a care home resident falling into the clutches of the NHS was exposed to. Certainly what residents experienced in some if not most hospitals was a grossly poor level of care. Certainly from the management side of the NHS.

Someone within the NHS must have instigated the signing of DNRs by GPs. It can't have been a local thing, because the evidence (again anecdotal) suggests that this was a nationwide phenomenon.

Here more recently in the Telegraph, it's reported more DNR notices were given to care home residents, but there's no appreciation this was done without consultation with care providers or patient's families. 

The last paragraph in this section should be a scandal:

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“However, what is clear from our results is that for a significant proportion of clinicians, resource limitation continued to factor into clinical decision making even when pressures on NHS resources had returned to near-normal levels.”

The Telegraph previously reported that children with learning disabilities were offered “do not resuscitate” orders during the pandemic, amid concerns about the pressure on the NHS.

Investigations by this newspaper also uncovered reports of adult patients with mental illness and learning disabilities who were given DNACPRs at this time.

A survey by the Care Quality Commission, published in March 2021, found more than 500 care home residents were made subject to DNR orders without their consent.

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That last paragraph, although a scandal in itself, doesn't tell the whole story. Elderly residents of care homes were regularly denied proper levels of care. People's Parents and Grandparents were shuffled off to side wards and denied basic care to die.

THAT is your NHS. That's what the nation clapped for. Feel good about that now?

It's a fucking disgrace and heads should roll. A full, independent investigation should be launched into how the most basic of care was deliberately denied certain patients. This was no accident, no result of negligence. This was a deliberate action by the NHS.

Someone told those GPS to write those DNRs. They didn't do it off their own bat.

Hospital staff accepted the discrimination of care home residents and didn't red flag what was going on.

This has got to be investigated, the people responsible removed from the NHS and it should not happen again.

Finally, the question that has not been addressed is:

Are those DNR notices still in place now? Are care home residents still at significant risk of reduced care levels when admitted to hospital?

UPDATE:

It very much appears as if the DNR orders are still in place. The wife has only recently heard of a resident that went into hospital and instead of receiving a pre-pandemic standard of care, they were actually put on the Liverpool pathway. 

Anyone in care knows and probably despises the Liverpool pathway, especially if they actually do care about their charges. 

The Liverpool pathway is a set of protocols for palliative or end of life care. It effectively withdraws nutrition and care in a way that speeds up the dying process. 

Except the Liverpool Pathway is being instigated on people that have a fair chance of recovery, if only they were actually given a decent standard of care. It's effectively euthanasia by the back door. It's effectively saying that there's a portion of the population that don't deserve care. 

We're back to the 70's and 80's when it comes to care for the elderly and disabled. Before disability rights supposedly protected people from inhuman and discriminatory treatment. 

This is an NHS that is now prepared to refuse care to a proportion of the population. 

It's a scandal that is not being reported. How many people have to die needlessly before the media will pick up on it? 

Or are certain thing taboo now with the media? Just like the extent of Muslim grooming gangs, are they going to stay quiet on on the mistreatment and discrimination of the elderly and disabled?

Trials ahead for Truss: Some quick fixes and some longer term ones required NOW.

So it's just been announced that Liz Truss has been voted in as t6he new leader of the Conservative Party.

There are some things she needs to do immediately.

The first is to sort out the issue of energy bills. Right now, in the immediate term, she needs to remove VAT from energy bills and fuel. I say fuel, because there are still houses using fuel oil for heating that don't appear to be getting any rebates or any help like people on direct debit energy tariffs. So just cut the bloody VAT.

That will have an immediate effect in lowering the price and (in the short term) provide some relief.

Then she can crack on sorting things out for the medium term and then the longer term.

I'm not sure the Socialist "pay the suppliers the difference" proposal is a real, Conservative answer. It's robbing Peter to pay Paul, or more accurately spending today to claw back tomorrow.

In the medium term, increasing production from UK offshore gas fields will ease the burden and lower the price. Of course energy suppliers won't like the government telling them what to do, but I'm sure the threat of a windfall tax will whip the suppliers into line and get them producing gas. 

Somehow we need to do something about futures markets bumping up the price of resources artificially, and also removing the link between global prices and locally produced resources. If we produce our gas, then we should be getting it cheaper. How we do that, I leave to the financial wizards, but to me it seems ludicrous that we are paying the highest global price for something we extract from the ground right here in the UK. I expect something like a hideous amount of tax on exported gas and oil would be the answer.

In the long term, giving Rolls Royce firm contracts for their Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMR) would be a very good move. The technology developed should be attractive around the world. 

SMRs distributed around the country would go some way to replacing Russian gas-fuelled electricity production. Being modular, once developed the installation should be straightforward and relatively quick (in nuclear reactor terms).

In the very long term, we need to be funding alternative nuclear options like molten salt reactors. China is already going down this route. 

And looking at the longer term as well, the net zero policy needs to be binned. Instead it needs to be replaced with a more pragmatic approach that isn't as dogmatic and is affordable for the majority of the country.

It's frankly disgusting watching a government saying it is powerless to do anything, because it is hamstrung to an ideology that is actually working against the population at large.

By sticking with net zero when so many people are facing severe hardship makes the government essentially the enemy of the people. They can kiss their votes goodbye unless they do something and quickly. 

I'd even go as far as demanding recompense for the effects of the policy so far, such is my disgust at the incompetence of the energy policy that has been in play over the past decade. It's tantamount to negligent behaviour, allowing security of energy supply to be removed. 

UPDATE: It seems to me that the real crux of all this is the unchallenged export of resources out of the country. For instance my old soap box stance of global companies paying corporation tax outside the UK. Something similar is happening in the energy market: companies extracting resources in the UK and then selling them outside the UK at global market rates.

In both instances, the UK, the provider of the profits, money and the resources seems to come off worst and not receive any benefit at all. 

That has to stop.