Music this week comes from Alison Krauss, one of Bluegrass music's finest ambassadors. But she does not confine herself to Bluegrass as can be seen from the random selection featured below (I have omitted her duets with Robert Plant as they were featured here a couple of weeks ago)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Krauss
https://alisonkrauss.com/
Friday, July 31, 2020
Thursday, July 30, 2020
Balancing the Energy Books, by Nick Drew
Some years ago on a sister blog to Broad Oak I wrote several posts noting how problematic was the rise in erratic forms of electricity generation (especially wind power) which presents the operators of grid systems with challenges that sometimes call upon extreme (and costly) (and inefficient) solutions. Germany is the worst.
The underlying physical facts have not much changed; and the amount of wind power has increased considerably. But the operators are good engineers - and regulators let them spend whatever they need to (and send us all the bill) - just keep the bloody lights on! So, by and large, the lights have been kept on, albeit at the cost of ever more of those extreme, inefficient and expensive solutions.
However, new solutions are hoving ever closer into view as practical propositions. Most of what I summarise below is not red-hot news in the industry; but a lot of MSM types are suddenly catching up with it.
It's all part of the vast, mostly-untapped world of demand-side response potential. We are going to need it all, eventually: and storage, and hydrogen. The good news is, this (like hydrogen replacing natural gas) is the kind of phenomenon that can grow slowly (at first), in small but steady degrees. Contrast with the unicorn of carbon-capture-and-storage - everyone can describe it, some people believe in it, but it doesn't exist - which can only be done by hitting critical mass immediately. That's hard. That takes public money.
The other beauty of DSR is, early adopters will love it (£££ + prestige) and then, at both the individual and the corporate level, it will become fashionable - always the best form of promo.
So: balancing a grid which supports a large amount of windpower and solar will never be cost-free - there has to be some flipside to sources of energy with almost zero direct variable cost (i.e. no fuel) - but it is going to get ever more efficient.
ND
The underlying physical facts have not much changed; and the amount of wind power has increased considerably. But the operators are good engineers - and regulators let them spend whatever they need to (and send us all the bill) - just keep the bloody lights on! So, by and large, the lights have been kept on, albeit at the cost of ever more of those extreme, inefficient and expensive solutions.
However, new solutions are hoving ever closer into view as practical propositions. Most of what I summarise below is not red-hot news in the industry; but a lot of MSM types are suddenly catching up with it.
- Storage: it has long been the quip in physics labs around the world that "if you can invent a truly economic means of storing electricity, you can name your university after yourself". I'm hoping it's obvious how cheap storage would contribute to the erratic windpower problem. Well, a bit like The Cure For Cancer, there hasn't been a single mighty breakthrough; rather, a lot of impressive incremental improvements, not least in batteries - and we're getting there. So, there are people building solar + battery combos, and massive grid-scale batteries at cunning points on the system, without subsidies: always the acid test. It's early days: but we're getting there. (It's not just batteries, either.)
- Hydrogen: I've written about this (and subsequently so, inter alia, has the DTel) quite recently. I know there are loads of sceptical views out there: but believe me, the amount of private money and effort going into this is truly immense. How does it contribute to the erratic windpower problem? Easy: storing hydrogen is much easier than storing electricity, and negative-price electricity (offpeak windpower at times of big surplus: solar power in many, errr, sunny parts of the world) can generate quite cheap hydrogen, via electrolysis. And hydrogen can be used for lots of applications - including generating electricity again! (I'm summarising heavily because it's a very big picture that's rapidly developing.)
- Demand-side response & aggregator systems: when the price of electricity goes negative, you can pay people to take it off your hands. Likewise, when it goes through the roof at times of peak usage, you can pay people to stop using it. Who are "people"? Well, just about anyone and any firm or organisation that can, with a bit of thought (and maybe a bit of investment), vary their demand in response to sufficiently juicy price incentives. To make this work on a big scale requires a lot of software sitting in some aggregator's systems, crunching the most epic quantities of data real-time and transacting millions of times in small quantities. There are more people with this vision than are making much money out of it - yet.
It's all part of the vast, mostly-untapped world of demand-side response potential. We are going to need it all, eventually: and storage, and hydrogen. The good news is, this (like hydrogen replacing natural gas) is the kind of phenomenon that can grow slowly (at first), in small but steady degrees. Contrast with the unicorn of carbon-capture-and-storage - everyone can describe it, some people believe in it, but it doesn't exist - which can only be done by hitting critical mass immediately. That's hard. That takes public money.
The other beauty of DSR is, early adopters will love it (£££ + prestige) and then, at both the individual and the corporate level, it will become fashionable - always the best form of promo.
So: balancing a grid which supports a large amount of windpower and solar will never be cost-free - there has to be some flipside to sources of energy with almost zero direct variable cost (i.e. no fuel) - but it is going to get ever more efficient.
ND
Monday, July 27, 2020
CHINA: Overfishing the world
The post below is reproduced from The Polynesian Times:
A study published a few days ago* reports large-scale illegal fishing in North Korean waters by Chinese ships that harvested more than 160,000 tons of Pacific flying squid in 2017 and 2018.
* https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/study-chinese-dark-fleets-illegally-defying-sanctions-by-fishing-in-north-korean-waters/ -
- referencing Science Magazine's article here:
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/30/eabb1197
According to the article, squid hauls have dropped since 2003 in South Korea and Japan, and 'unable to compete with the more technologically advanced Chinese vessels, which use powerful lights and other technologies to maximize the size of their catch, some North Koreans have resorted to fishing illegally in faraway Russian waters.' International cooperation in managing fish stocks is breaking down.
This reminds us of comments made on Youtube five months ago by a South African-born businessman and vlogger who has worked and lived in China for years. 'Serpentza' (Winston Sterzel) says (starting 6:56 in the video below):
"China has completely outfished the waters off the coast of China and so their fishing trawlers must seek alternatives and the alternatives are: the rest of the entire world.
"Clandestine Chinese fishing has decimated the fish stocks off the coast of South Africa, my country, and most of the African coast, where corrupt leaders are easily bribed to turn a blind eye while local fishermen and communities suffer greatly [...]
"There is no catch-and-release or sustainable fishing in the modern Chinese mentality. As a nation who recently experienced devastating famine, it's a 'take now before it's all gone' mentality."
He also talks about Chinese economic activity that damages the environment, wildlife (e.g. by unrestricted hunting in Africa) and people's health, while Chinese officialdom has great difficulty in enforcing laws that could prevent this.
A couple of months later he was on Instagram, reporting : "Chinese fishing ships off the coast of South Africa are illegally stripping the ocean of fish at an alarming rate yet nothing is being done, many people speculate that the South African government has been paid to turn a blind eye the same as what happened in Namibia":
A report last month on Maritime Executive says that China plans two closed seasons on squid fishing in the Pacific and Atlantic, to help stocks recover:
"The closed seasons cover what are believed to be the main spawning grounds of the Humboldt squid, in waters to the west of Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, from July to September, and of the Argentine shortfin squid, off Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, from September to November."
We shall see whether this is enforceable, and what other measures need to be and will be taken. The magazine also links to a site called 'China Dialogue Ocean', saying 'China Dialogue Ocean (https://chinadialogueocean.net) is dedicated to illuminating, analyzing and helping to resolve our ocean crisis.' We hope this is more than merely PR in these difficult times for international diplomacy.
A study published a few days ago* reports large-scale illegal fishing in North Korean waters by Chinese ships that harvested more than 160,000 tons of Pacific flying squid in 2017 and 2018.
* https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/study-chinese-dark-fleets-illegally-defying-sanctions-by-fishing-in-north-korean-waters/ -
- referencing Science Magazine's article here:
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/30/eabb1197
According to the article, squid hauls have dropped since 2003 in South Korea and Japan, and 'unable to compete with the more technologically advanced Chinese vessels, which use powerful lights and other technologies to maximize the size of their catch, some North Koreans have resorted to fishing illegally in faraway Russian waters.' International cooperation in managing fish stocks is breaking down.
This reminds us of comments made on Youtube five months ago by a South African-born businessman and vlogger who has worked and lived in China for years. 'Serpentza' (Winston Sterzel) says (starting 6:56 in the video below):
"China has completely outfished the waters off the coast of China and so their fishing trawlers must seek alternatives and the alternatives are: the rest of the entire world.
"Clandestine Chinese fishing has decimated the fish stocks off the coast of South Africa, my country, and most of the African coast, where corrupt leaders are easily bribed to turn a blind eye while local fishermen and communities suffer greatly [...]
"There is no catch-and-release or sustainable fishing in the modern Chinese mentality. As a nation who recently experienced devastating famine, it's a 'take now before it's all gone' mentality."
He also talks about Chinese economic activity that damages the environment, wildlife (e.g. by unrestricted hunting in Africa) and people's health, while Chinese officialdom has great difficulty in enforcing laws that could prevent this.
A couple of months later he was on Instagram, reporting : "Chinese fishing ships off the coast of South Africa are illegally stripping the ocean of fish at an alarming rate yet nothing is being done, many people speculate that the South African government has been paid to turn a blind eye the same as what happened in Namibia":
 |
| https://www.instagram.com/p/B_k-Dm0DoRw/?igshid=20yb86pv34st |
A report last month on Maritime Executive says that China plans two closed seasons on squid fishing in the Pacific and Atlantic, to help stocks recover:
"The closed seasons cover what are believed to be the main spawning grounds of the Humboldt squid, in waters to the west of Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, from July to September, and of the Argentine shortfin squid, off Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, from September to November."
We shall see whether this is enforceable, and what other measures need to be and will be taken. The magazine also links to a site called 'China Dialogue Ocean', saying 'China Dialogue Ocean (https://chinadialogueocean.net) is dedicated to illuminating, analyzing and helping to resolve our ocean crisis.' We hope this is more than merely PR in these difficult times for international diplomacy.
Sunday, July 26, 2020
Do solar storms cause earthquakes?
A new (13 July) paper in Nature magazine has found a correlation between solar activity and earthquakes of a moderate magnitude (5.6) or greater. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-67860-3 The study uses 20 years of satellite data about charged particles coming from the sun and relates this to medium-plus earthquakes occurring within 24 hours after a solar storm (coronal mass ejection, or CME.)
The tentative causal explanation is to do with the 'piezo-electric effect'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoelectricity For example, when the crystal in a cigarette lighter is compressed it emits a spark, because the mechanical force is transformed into electrical energy.
Conversely, if an electric charge is applied to the crystal, it will change shape slightly to absorb the energy; so, given that the Earth is magnetic because of what is assumed to be an iron core, if the power of a solar flare hits the planet's magnetic field then it is possible that there is some expansion or warping deep inside that returns to the surface in the form of earthquakes and volcanic activity.
This connection between the sun and the Earth's seismic activity has long been suspected by 'Dutchinse' (Michael Yuri Janitch) an American amateur earthquake analyst and predictor and the new study has excited him:
He has also previously suggested - as have some others - that a scientific program known as HAARP, which studies the effects of powerful man-made radio emissions aimed at the Earth's ionosphere (upper atmosphere) may have an effect on seismic activity and weather and may even be part of a clandestine military project. This is pooh-poohed by mainstream commentators (e.g. here), though of course it's not axiomatic that all conspiracy theories are wrong.
As it happens, the sun is unusually 'quiet' at the moment (i.e. few sunspots, flares and CMEs); and there seems to be a correlation between the sun's c. 11-year sunspot cycle and climate on Earth - these quiet periods are associated with cooler weather - there was a particularly long time from c. 1645 on:
'One interesting aspect of solar cycles is that the sun went through a period of near zero sunspot activity from about 1645 to 1715. This period of sunspot minima is called the Maunder Minimum. The "Little Ice Age" occurred over parts of Earth during the Maunder Minimum.'
- and the same article says times of high sunspot activity may warm the atmosphere, instead:
'There is debate within the scientific community how much solar activity can, or does affect Earth's climate. There is research which shows evidence that Earth's climate is sensitive to very weak changes in the Sun's energy output over time frames of 10s and 100s of years. Times of maximum sunspot activity are associated with a very slight increase in the energy output from the sun. Ultraviolet radiation increases dramatically during high sunspot activity, which can have a large effect on the Earth's atmosphere.'
However, NASA suggests that the current scale of 'global warming' is not related to variations in the sun's radiance:
Again, it's not clear exactly how and where these temperatures were recorded, so there is still room for debate and speculation.
The tentative causal explanation is to do with the 'piezo-electric effect'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoelectricity For example, when the crystal in a cigarette lighter is compressed it emits a spark, because the mechanical force is transformed into electrical energy.
 |
| https://www.scienceabc.com/innovation/how-doe-lighters-work.html |
Conversely, if an electric charge is applied to the crystal, it will change shape slightly to absorb the energy; so, given that the Earth is magnetic because of what is assumed to be an iron core, if the power of a solar flare hits the planet's magnetic field then it is possible that there is some expansion or warping deep inside that returns to the surface in the form of earthquakes and volcanic activity.
This connection between the sun and the Earth's seismic activity has long been suspected by 'Dutchinse' (Michael Yuri Janitch) an American amateur earthquake analyst and predictor and the new study has excited him:
He has also previously suggested - as have some others - that a scientific program known as HAARP, which studies the effects of powerful man-made radio emissions aimed at the Earth's ionosphere (upper atmosphere) may have an effect on seismic activity and weather and may even be part of a clandestine military project. This is pooh-poohed by mainstream commentators (e.g. here), though of course it's not axiomatic that all conspiracy theories are wrong.
As it happens, the sun is unusually 'quiet' at the moment (i.e. few sunspots, flares and CMEs); and there seems to be a correlation between the sun's c. 11-year sunspot cycle and climate on Earth - these quiet periods are associated with cooler weather - there was a particularly long time from c. 1645 on:
'One interesting aspect of solar cycles is that the sun went through a period of near zero sunspot activity from about 1645 to 1715. This period of sunspot minima is called the Maunder Minimum. The "Little Ice Age" occurred over parts of Earth during the Maunder Minimum.'
- and the same article says times of high sunspot activity may warm the atmosphere, instead:
'There is debate within the scientific community how much solar activity can, or does affect Earth's climate. There is research which shows evidence that Earth's climate is sensitive to very weak changes in the Sun's energy output over time frames of 10s and 100s of years. Times of maximum sunspot activity are associated with a very slight increase in the energy output from the sun. Ultraviolet radiation increases dramatically during high sunspot activity, which can have a large effect on the Earth's atmosphere.'
However, NASA suggests that the current scale of 'global warming' is not related to variations in the sun's radiance:
 |
| https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/189/graphic-temperature-vs-solar-activity/ |
Saturday, July 25, 2020
SATURDAY ESSAY: NHS - an everyday tale of woe and incompetence, by Wiggia
I was asked to put this together after a series of emails to my friends on here about the family travails with the NHS, both during and before the virus struck. I wanted to write in the third party form as all below is personal but anyone reading the account would soon see it was my own view on what has happened within our family.
It is very easy to slate the NHS when something like this story unfolds. As usual there are good and bad sides to the organisation and that one word, organisation, is the one thing above all else that lets the NHS down, along with a belief among many who run these trusts that the NHS is theirs and they have the final word and run it for their benefit. The whys and wherefores of the NHS have been dissected by many more able than me and that side is another story so I won't go there other than relate the relevant items in the piece below.
I have to say I am in no way anti the formation of the NHS: my early memories of it were of GPs working seven day weeks and often all hours. That was never going to be sustainable in a modern world In later years as the NHS grew along with the welfare state to be all things to all men; the cracks started to appear and instead of a forensic appraisal of the system they just added layers of bureaucratic management and threw ever increasing sums of money at it with never any accountability - the Blair years saw this at its peak, or so we thought.
I will give a short summary of my own clashes with my local surgery since we moved here; again, thousands out there can give similar examples from their own experience.
Until that move we had been fortunate in having a surgery you could always get an appointment with even at busy times, but that all changed; we now have a two-story medical center that has 14,000 patients on its books and currently six doctors (down from when we arrived here). As in most parts of the country, there has been endless building of new estates, all the occupants of which join the ever-growing patient list at our medical cente. The result is easily predictable: appointments are almost non-existent and even before the virus struck the place was hardly ever crowded as the doctors are nearly all part-timers, so phone consultations were already well established pre-Covid and will now constitute 80% of all appointments; how that equates to actually seeing a problem I have no idea, and even phone ‘consultations’ already have a waiting list of up to two weeks! Quite extraordinary. This is the health service now being foisted on us who pay for it all; and for those in the NHS who think the government pays for it all, you are wrong: the taxpayer is the one to be applauded.
My first encounter with the medical centre was when I thought I had sprained my ankle. It didn’t improve so I got an appointment - this was before the place became silly with waiting lists - but it still took two weeks to see me. It was diagnosed as a sprain: 'Take painkillers, rest up.' Time passed, no improvement, went back: same diagnosis, same treatment. Still no improvement after three months, went to physio, she took one look and said 'Broken foot, need scan' and wrote a letter to the surgery. After another two weeks I got a letter from the surgery to go for a scan; a month later I had a letter from the hospital with an appointment for the scan; I went to the hospital and the scan showed the foot had multiple injuries and a broken bone, so an appointment was made to see a specialist. A month later I had an X-ray at the hospital before seeing the specialist, who was annoyed that I was wasting his time as the foot had healed up - well it would, after seven months, and I told him 'Don’t have a go at me, reserve your ire for my GP.'
My second surgery debacle was more serious than I could have imagined. I had not felt well for some time but the symptoms seemed to go away and then returned after a couple of weeks: sweating, breathing problems when exerting and very tired. This time I needed to see a doctor as I had no idea what was going on, so the appointment saga started, but I said four weeks was no good, I needed to see someone now. 'Phone again tomorrow.' This went on all week with me feeling worse and getting no joy from the surgery, so I decided I would go in person Monday morning and insist I see someone.
I got up on the Monday, went into the bathroom feel terrible, broke into a malaria-like sweat, sat on the edge of the bed and passed out. An ambulance was called and I was taken to the acute ward for tests, X-rays and later a scan: I had a large blood clot on each lung and clots on the arteries leading to the lungs.
As an aside, in the acute ward of eight three of us had the same thing and none could get an appointment - one had to leave his car at the surgery after insisting on seeing a doctor and an ambulance was called to bring him in.
After a week of treatment I left. The hospital treatment was very good but before I left I saw the senior nurse at the coagulation unit who told me I was a lucky boy as I had had less than forty-eight hours to live when I came in; she said she was disgusted at the surgery's system, though as she said they are all the same now.
The surgery was phoned to take over me as a patient and do the blood tests as I was on Warfarin then. The surgery denied it did such tests but the nurse had some serious words and said she would refer them to the Medical Council and lo and behold they said they did do them and I was now on the list. As you can gather from all this my surgery does not get any Christmas cards from me. Change GPs, you say? Don’t make me laugh: all the surgeries are the same and do not accept patients from other post codes, so hard luck.
I could rack up more of the same kind of story for my wife who is now in severe pain from osteoarthritis but gets relief from the injections in her knees and shoulders. Needless to say they were not available during the peak virus period or even now as they lower the immune system; the fact that our surgery has not had a single case of the virus and my wife's immune system is always very low because of other medication does not come into it, and there is no relief in sight.
The really good (!) story is that of my sister and her husband. My sister after going sky diving nearly two years ago - a birthday present! - had a suspected fracture in her shoulder. The examination and subsequent scan showed ten such fractures; further examination showed she had bone cancer, and in her case it was not getting the right treatment - that was the problem, it was the errors in getting it: she was taken to the wrong hospital for the start of her chemotherapy and the ambulance despite having the correct hospital in their notes still took her there. After realising the mistake they said she would have be returned to the base hospital as they had no time for a diversion; the chemo was postponed for a week and she had to stay that week in her suit of armour that she had to wear to stop her moving and breaking more bones - not comfortable.
On another occasion she was dropped off for her chemo but was told a taxi would take her home - she lives just ten minutes away. Time went on and no taxi. She enquired after an hour and was told it was on its way; still no taxi. The administrator in charge haddecided to save some money and use a mini bus for several patients and waited until the last was ready, but told no one until it arrived. In her armoured suit and feeling like shit she got in to the bus. After an hour she asked where they were as she lived nearby; the driver said the patients who lived furthest out would be the first to be dropped off, so of course she would now be last as her house was nearest. As the daid to the driver, her husband was not available to drive her home and if she had known she would have got her own taxi, not now she was hardly in a condition to abandon ship and make her way home. She finally arrived home after seven hours including the original wait. There were three chemo patients on that bus and one was seriously sick. How do management go ahead with things like this, knowing exactly what they are doing to people? No-one is ever accountable.
Similar, lesser things also occurred.
Now the pièce de résistance: while recovering from her chemo my poor sister had some bad news about her husband, who had suffered from a mysterious breathing problem that despite various visits to hospital no one had been able to diagnose. During a visit in October 2019 they decided to do a full body scan and he was found to have liver cancer, at that stage not advanced and an open operation was scheduled for January; this was cancelled and another scheduled. This too was postponed and then the virus came along and no one got any treatment for anything. During this period and long before they were in effect living separate lives in their own house, as my sister has no immune system because of her chemo.
Sometime during April the brother-in-law had a recurrence of the chest problems with a lot of pain and returned to hospital. My sister could not go with him for obvious reasons but phoned later to see how he wass getting on. It transpired that despite being tested and cleared for the coronavirus virus he had been been put in a side ward with two people who did have the virus and one who was suspected of having it. My sister went ballistic and demanded to speak to someone with authority and got him moved. Why he was put there remains a mystery.
Finally he got a call to go for a ‘conversation’ having had another up-to-date scan; he was told it had spread and the open operation was no longer an option - he would have to have it under anaesthetic. The anaesthetist is not happy with this as his chest problems meant in her opinion that he only had a 50 – 50 chance of surviving the operation. Naturally he needed a while to come to terms with that and went home. The following day the hospital phoned: his operation was still scheduled for that day, but he declined.
Many would say that was not a good decision, but by chance or fate or whatever a week and a half later he got a call: radiotherapy, not available during the lock down, was back on the agenda. He was summoned to the Royal Marsden and started a course of radiotherapy the following week. At the end of it he was told, as all patients with this treatment are, that he would feel not at all well for a while and it came to pass that he felt very unwell, bad enough to call the ambulance again.
It appears that his chest problem was adding to his discomfort so they kept him in and ran some more tests that returned a negative. They still could not isolate what was causing the chest problems and the results were phoned through to my sister who could not visit him, or so she thought ! The next day there was another call from the hospital: further tests revealed he had Covid-19! Where the hell has this come from? He had not been out of the house for six months and my sister likewise after her cancer, all the family and my sister were then tested for the virus and all came back clear. The only place the b-i-l had visited was the hospital - if he hadn’t contracted it there, where on earth could he have?
He sent a message to my sister asking for his phone, glasses etc as he would be kept in for seven days. She insisted on going to the hospital with his personal items and to see him; the hospital said she could not have any contact with him, especially in her case, and could only wave through the glass door or show messages, and advised against the visit ! When she said she was coming anyway they changed their attitude to ‘Well, you can only see him for fifteen minutes and will have to wear mask, gloves, hat and shoe coverings.’ Really ! How can a patient with the virus be allowed any time at all with a person with no immune system if he really has it? There is something very wrong here, or I am missing something?
Maybe it's a bit unfair putting up the above image of William and his family applauding the NHS, they almost certainly were under orders, yet you have to ask yourselves what would they know of the NHS? They have never had to use it.
I have had very good treatment from the NHS and as I stated at the start I am not going to give a forensic report on all the things that are very wrong with the organisation, but much will be revealed in the coming months, I am sure, when the figures for deaths of non-Covid patients with cancer, heart conditions and numerous other deadly diseases start to rack up, let alone people like myself who has two hips needing replacing and has not had even a consultation after six months.
Even the ‘pleasure’ of going private has been taken away as the private hospitals that were commandeered by the NHS to help the flood of Covid patients and were never used are now being kept on the NHS books in a vain attempt to help with the backlog created. There was a report in the Times last week about people with private health insurance cancelling policies as they could not get any treatment - what a mess!
There was a vague chance for the government to lead on this virus and use it as a springboard to at least start to ‘improve’ and streamline the bloated monster it has become, yet all we have received are endless mendacious contradictory statements and an element indeed a large dose of legerdemain about all and everything.
With Boris talking about mask-wearing well into 2021 the NHS will be so bogged down with an enormous backlog it must and will be reverting to the two-year waiting lists for major procedures, and still they carry on with their face-saving protection measures.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8396253/UK-patients-face-TWO-YEAR-wait-elective-surgery-NHS-backlog-set-hit-650-000.html
It was said by many before this virus came about that the NHS needed - as it has done for decades - root and branch reform. Now, with it being put on a podium to be regularly applauded at the appointed hour, there is not much chance of that happening.
‘Envy of the world’? I think not.
Wiggia adds (8 August):
I came upon this today a critique of the NHS, everything said in that article I agree with, as an example when I phoned a couple of weeks ago for a prescription for pain killers for my hips I had to wait for the doctor to phone me first it took four days, he was very to the point etc and speaks sense, until it came to 'how long before I get to see the consultant never mind the op' he said my letter already three months after the diagnosis was dated 19th of March as such I was at the head of queue as they have started seeing people again, oh I said so not long, roughly eighteen weeks you are at lest not further down the list, he sounded quite pleased with that and I said not much to get excited about then as it will be ten months after the diagnosis before I even see the consultant, they actually think the NHS is doing us a favour, that we pay for this sub standard health care doesn't even register with them, it's free after all, free my ass.
Anyway this is the link..........
https://thecritic.co.uk/who-do-think-were-kidding-with-the-nhs/
It is very easy to slate the NHS when something like this story unfolds. As usual there are good and bad sides to the organisation and that one word, organisation, is the one thing above all else that lets the NHS down, along with a belief among many who run these trusts that the NHS is theirs and they have the final word and run it for their benefit. The whys and wherefores of the NHS have been dissected by many more able than me and that side is another story so I won't go there other than relate the relevant items in the piece below.
I have to say I am in no way anti the formation of the NHS: my early memories of it were of GPs working seven day weeks and often all hours. That was never going to be sustainable in a modern world In later years as the NHS grew along with the welfare state to be all things to all men; the cracks started to appear and instead of a forensic appraisal of the system they just added layers of bureaucratic management and threw ever increasing sums of money at it with never any accountability - the Blair years saw this at its peak, or so we thought.
 |
| Above: a not untypical doctor's waiting room these days - but you still wait four weeks and more for an appointment. |
I will give a short summary of my own clashes with my local surgery since we moved here; again, thousands out there can give similar examples from their own experience.
Until that move we had been fortunate in having a surgery you could always get an appointment with even at busy times, but that all changed; we now have a two-story medical center that has 14,000 patients on its books and currently six doctors (down from when we arrived here). As in most parts of the country, there has been endless building of new estates, all the occupants of which join the ever-growing patient list at our medical cente. The result is easily predictable: appointments are almost non-existent and even before the virus struck the place was hardly ever crowded as the doctors are nearly all part-timers, so phone consultations were already well established pre-Covid and will now constitute 80% of all appointments; how that equates to actually seeing a problem I have no idea, and even phone ‘consultations’ already have a waiting list of up to two weeks! Quite extraordinary. This is the health service now being foisted on us who pay for it all; and for those in the NHS who think the government pays for it all, you are wrong: the taxpayer is the one to be applauded.
My first encounter with the medical centre was when I thought I had sprained my ankle. It didn’t improve so I got an appointment - this was before the place became silly with waiting lists - but it still took two weeks to see me. It was diagnosed as a sprain: 'Take painkillers, rest up.' Time passed, no improvement, went back: same diagnosis, same treatment. Still no improvement after three months, went to physio, she took one look and said 'Broken foot, need scan' and wrote a letter to the surgery. After another two weeks I got a letter from the surgery to go for a scan; a month later I had a letter from the hospital with an appointment for the scan; I went to the hospital and the scan showed the foot had multiple injuries and a broken bone, so an appointment was made to see a specialist. A month later I had an X-ray at the hospital before seeing the specialist, who was annoyed that I was wasting his time as the foot had healed up - well it would, after seven months, and I told him 'Don’t have a go at me, reserve your ire for my GP.'
My second surgery debacle was more serious than I could have imagined. I had not felt well for some time but the symptoms seemed to go away and then returned after a couple of weeks: sweating, breathing problems when exerting and very tired. This time I needed to see a doctor as I had no idea what was going on, so the appointment saga started, but I said four weeks was no good, I needed to see someone now. 'Phone again tomorrow.' This went on all week with me feeling worse and getting no joy from the surgery, so I decided I would go in person Monday morning and insist I see someone.
I got up on the Monday, went into the bathroom feel terrible, broke into a malaria-like sweat, sat on the edge of the bed and passed out. An ambulance was called and I was taken to the acute ward for tests, X-rays and later a scan: I had a large blood clot on each lung and clots on the arteries leading to the lungs.
As an aside, in the acute ward of eight three of us had the same thing and none could get an appointment - one had to leave his car at the surgery after insisting on seeing a doctor and an ambulance was called to bring him in.
After a week of treatment I left. The hospital treatment was very good but before I left I saw the senior nurse at the coagulation unit who told me I was a lucky boy as I had had less than forty-eight hours to live when I came in; she said she was disgusted at the surgery's system, though as she said they are all the same now.
The surgery was phoned to take over me as a patient and do the blood tests as I was on Warfarin then. The surgery denied it did such tests but the nurse had some serious words and said she would refer them to the Medical Council and lo and behold they said they did do them and I was now on the list. As you can gather from all this my surgery does not get any Christmas cards from me. Change GPs, you say? Don’t make me laugh: all the surgeries are the same and do not accept patients from other post codes, so hard luck.
I could rack up more of the same kind of story for my wife who is now in severe pain from osteoarthritis but gets relief from the injections in her knees and shoulders. Needless to say they were not available during the peak virus period or even now as they lower the immune system; the fact that our surgery has not had a single case of the virus and my wife's immune system is always very low because of other medication does not come into it, and there is no relief in sight.
The really good (!) story is that of my sister and her husband. My sister after going sky diving nearly two years ago - a birthday present! - had a suspected fracture in her shoulder. The examination and subsequent scan showed ten such fractures; further examination showed she had bone cancer, and in her case it was not getting the right treatment - that was the problem, it was the errors in getting it: she was taken to the wrong hospital for the start of her chemotherapy and the ambulance despite having the correct hospital in their notes still took her there. After realising the mistake they said she would have be returned to the base hospital as they had no time for a diversion; the chemo was postponed for a week and she had to stay that week in her suit of armour that she had to wear to stop her moving and breaking more bones - not comfortable.
On another occasion she was dropped off for her chemo but was told a taxi would take her home - she lives just ten minutes away. Time went on and no taxi. She enquired after an hour and was told it was on its way; still no taxi. The administrator in charge haddecided to save some money and use a mini bus for several patients and waited until the last was ready, but told no one until it arrived. In her armoured suit and feeling like shit she got in to the bus. After an hour she asked where they were as she lived nearby; the driver said the patients who lived furthest out would be the first to be dropped off, so of course she would now be last as her house was nearest. As the daid to the driver, her husband was not available to drive her home and if she had known she would have got her own taxi, not now she was hardly in a condition to abandon ship and make her way home. She finally arrived home after seven hours including the original wait. There were three chemo patients on that bus and one was seriously sick. How do management go ahead with things like this, knowing exactly what they are doing to people? No-one is ever accountable.
Similar, lesser things also occurred.
Now the pièce de résistance: while recovering from her chemo my poor sister had some bad news about her husband, who had suffered from a mysterious breathing problem that despite various visits to hospital no one had been able to diagnose. During a visit in October 2019 they decided to do a full body scan and he was found to have liver cancer, at that stage not advanced and an open operation was scheduled for January; this was cancelled and another scheduled. This too was postponed and then the virus came along and no one got any treatment for anything. During this period and long before they were in effect living separate lives in their own house, as my sister has no immune system because of her chemo.
Sometime during April the brother-in-law had a recurrence of the chest problems with a lot of pain and returned to hospital. My sister could not go with him for obvious reasons but phoned later to see how he wass getting on. It transpired that despite being tested and cleared for the coronavirus virus he had been been put in a side ward with two people who did have the virus and one who was suspected of having it. My sister went ballistic and demanded to speak to someone with authority and got him moved. Why he was put there remains a mystery.
Finally he got a call to go for a ‘conversation’ having had another up-to-date scan; he was told it had spread and the open operation was no longer an option - he would have to have it under anaesthetic. The anaesthetist is not happy with this as his chest problems meant in her opinion that he only had a 50 – 50 chance of surviving the operation. Naturally he needed a while to come to terms with that and went home. The following day the hospital phoned: his operation was still scheduled for that day, but he declined.
Many would say that was not a good decision, but by chance or fate or whatever a week and a half later he got a call: radiotherapy, not available during the lock down, was back on the agenda. He was summoned to the Royal Marsden and started a course of radiotherapy the following week. At the end of it he was told, as all patients with this treatment are, that he would feel not at all well for a while and it came to pass that he felt very unwell, bad enough to call the ambulance again.
It appears that his chest problem was adding to his discomfort so they kept him in and ran some more tests that returned a negative. They still could not isolate what was causing the chest problems and the results were phoned through to my sister who could not visit him, or so she thought ! The next day there was another call from the hospital: further tests revealed he had Covid-19! Where the hell has this come from? He had not been out of the house for six months and my sister likewise after her cancer, all the family and my sister were then tested for the virus and all came back clear. The only place the b-i-l had visited was the hospital - if he hadn’t contracted it there, where on earth could he have?
He sent a message to my sister asking for his phone, glasses etc as he would be kept in for seven days. She insisted on going to the hospital with his personal items and to see him; the hospital said she could not have any contact with him, especially in her case, and could only wave through the glass door or show messages, and advised against the visit ! When she said she was coming anyway they changed their attitude to ‘Well, you can only see him for fifteen minutes and will have to wear mask, gloves, hat and shoe coverings.’ Really ! How can a patient with the virus be allowed any time at all with a person with no immune system if he really has it? There is something very wrong here, or I am missing something?
Maybe it's a bit unfair putting up the above image of William and his family applauding the NHS, they almost certainly were under orders, yet you have to ask yourselves what would they know of the NHS? They have never had to use it.
I have had very good treatment from the NHS and as I stated at the start I am not going to give a forensic report on all the things that are very wrong with the organisation, but much will be revealed in the coming months, I am sure, when the figures for deaths of non-Covid patients with cancer, heart conditions and numerous other deadly diseases start to rack up, let alone people like myself who has two hips needing replacing and has not had even a consultation after six months.
Even the ‘pleasure’ of going private has been taken away as the private hospitals that were commandeered by the NHS to help the flood of Covid patients and were never used are now being kept on the NHS books in a vain attempt to help with the backlog created. There was a report in the Times last week about people with private health insurance cancelling policies as they could not get any treatment - what a mess!
There was a vague chance for the government to lead on this virus and use it as a springboard to at least start to ‘improve’ and streamline the bloated monster it has become, yet all we have received are endless mendacious contradictory statements and an element indeed a large dose of legerdemain about all and everything.
With Boris talking about mask-wearing well into 2021 the NHS will be so bogged down with an enormous backlog it must and will be reverting to the two-year waiting lists for major procedures, and still they carry on with their face-saving protection measures.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8396253/UK-patients-face-TWO-YEAR-wait-elective-surgery-NHS-backlog-set-hit-650-000.html
It was said by many before this virus came about that the NHS needed - as it has done for decades - root and branch reform. Now, with it being put on a podium to be regularly applauded at the appointed hour, there is not much chance of that happening.
‘Envy of the world’? I think not.
Wiggia adds (8 August):
I came upon this today a critique of the NHS, everything said in that article I agree with, as an example when I phoned a couple of weeks ago for a prescription for pain killers for my hips I had to wait for the doctor to phone me first it took four days, he was very to the point etc and speaks sense, until it came to 'how long before I get to see the consultant never mind the op' he said my letter already three months after the diagnosis was dated 19th of March as such I was at the head of queue as they have started seeing people again, oh I said so not long, roughly eighteen weeks you are at lest not further down the list, he sounded quite pleased with that and I said not much to get excited about then as it will be ten months after the diagnosis before I even see the consultant, they actually think the NHS is doing us a favour, that we pay for this sub standard health care doesn't even register with them, it's free after all, free my ass.
Anyway this is the link..........
https://thecritic.co.uk/who-do-think-were-kidding-with-the-nhs/
Friday, July 24, 2020
FRIDAY MUSIC: Corvus Corax, by JD
Corvus Corax is the Latin name for the common raven which is the largest of the corvids.
Most people will be familiar with the association of ravens with the Tower of London and with the legend that England would not fall to a foreign invader as long as there were ravens at the Tower (Just to be on the safe side the ravens wings are clipped!) According to Wiki the legend is probably a Victorian invention but their source for that is The Guardian newspaper which, as we all know, is honest and reliable. It is more likely that it really is a story whose origin is lost in the mists of timebut according to the Mabinogion, one of the earliest stories of the history of Britain the head of the Welsh god Bran the Blessed (whose name means raven) is buried at the White Hill in the Tower as a talisman against invasion.
The bird features in mythology very often as a pyschopomp, a bridge between the two realms, between life and death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_raven
And so, after that short bit of 'setting the scene', to this week's music which comes from a German band of the same name - Corvus Corax.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvus_Corax_(band)
How to descibe them? How about Dudelsack medieval heavy metal? They are positively Wagnerian in their stage shows! So fasten your seatbelts, turn up the volume and prepare to be blown away by the most spectacular show you have ever seen. And the music is good too.
GÄNSEHAUT!
Most people will be familiar with the association of ravens with the Tower of London and with the legend that England would not fall to a foreign invader as long as there were ravens at the Tower (Just to be on the safe side the ravens wings are clipped!) According to Wiki the legend is probably a Victorian invention but their source for that is The Guardian newspaper which, as we all know, is honest and reliable. It is more likely that it really is a story whose origin is lost in the mists of timebut according to the Mabinogion, one of the earliest stories of the history of Britain the head of the Welsh god Bran the Blessed (whose name means raven) is buried at the White Hill in the Tower as a talisman against invasion.
The bird features in mythology very often as a pyschopomp, a bridge between the two realms, between life and death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_raven
And so, after that short bit of 'setting the scene', to this week's music which comes from a German band of the same name - Corvus Corax.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvus_Corax_(band)
How to descibe them? How about Dudelsack medieval heavy metal? They are positively Wagnerian in their stage shows! So fasten your seatbelts, turn up the volume and prepare to be blown away by the most spectacular show you have ever seen. And the music is good too.
GÄNSEHAUT!
Thursday, July 23, 2020
The power of belief
Michael McIntyre's autobiography 'Life & Laughing' contains an extraordinary episode, one that may have played an essential part in his becoming a world-famous success as an entertainer.
His mother, a teenager who met his future father when the latter was holding auditions, went into a psychic bookshop in Kensington, London, shortly afterwards, to have her fortune told by a Tarot card reader. The reader was shocked at the cards and called in his colleagues:
'What is it?' my mother asked.
Her original reader spoke: 'You are pregnant.'
'I'm not,' insisted my mum. In actual fact she was, but didn't know it yet. [...]
'You will have a son,' continued one of the other readers who had been summoned. 'He will be world-famous, everybody will know his name, he will do wonderful things. He is special.'
The rest of her reading contained equally far-fetched information about her future. 'You will have many children. You will live in an old house for five years, and then you and your husband will be separated by seas and by death. That will be £6.50, please.'
All came true. Michael, mostly a very poor student (from disinclination) and who failed to apply hmself in his one year at Edinburgh University because his sights were set on other things, suffered years of failure, rejection and semi-success in stand-up comedy before marriage and new fatherhood lit a fire under him so that he worked flat-out and suddenly made it to the very top.
McIntyre says he is not at all superstitious; but would we know of him today if his mother hadn't always believed in his special-ness? What if she had criticised and castigated him for his many shortcomings and failures, instead?
It reminds me of a young boy - maybe 12 years old - I met when I was teaching at a children's home. He was intellectually curious, especially about Romans, and showed signs of originality as an artist. After I had left there I was invited back to the home's Christmas celebration and was introduced to him by a member of staff, to whom I said, 'I know X, I'm expecting great things of him.'
The boy didn't speak, but flushed. I am certain he will never forget this passing remark. I hope that such an expression of belief in him will light his way as he grows up.
The power of words, of another's faith in you.
His mother, a teenager who met his future father when the latter was holding auditions, went into a psychic bookshop in Kensington, London, shortly afterwards, to have her fortune told by a Tarot card reader. The reader was shocked at the cards and called in his colleagues:
'What is it?' my mother asked.
Her original reader spoke: 'You are pregnant.'
'I'm not,' insisted my mum. In actual fact she was, but didn't know it yet. [...]
'You will have a son,' continued one of the other readers who had been summoned. 'He will be world-famous, everybody will know his name, he will do wonderful things. He is special.'
The rest of her reading contained equally far-fetched information about her future. 'You will have many children. You will live in an old house for five years, and then you and your husband will be separated by seas and by death. That will be £6.50, please.'
All came true. Michael, mostly a very poor student (from disinclination) and who failed to apply hmself in his one year at Edinburgh University because his sights were set on other things, suffered years of failure, rejection and semi-success in stand-up comedy before marriage and new fatherhood lit a fire under him so that he worked flat-out and suddenly made it to the very top.
McIntyre says he is not at all superstitious; but would we know of him today if his mother hadn't always believed in his special-ness? What if she had criticised and castigated him for his many shortcomings and failures, instead?
It reminds me of a young boy - maybe 12 years old - I met when I was teaching at a children's home. He was intellectually curious, especially about Romans, and showed signs of originality as an artist. After I had left there I was invited back to the home's Christmas celebration and was introduced to him by a member of staff, to whom I said, 'I know X, I'm expecting great things of him.'
The boy didn't speak, but flushed. I am certain he will never forget this passing remark. I hope that such an expression of belief in him will light his way as he grows up.
The power of words, of another's faith in you.
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