As clear as the nose on your face??

George Osborne......"Jus' like that..."

So the latest financial news tells us that the UK has a damn good(?) chance of heading for a 'triple dip recession'. Now I don't know that much about the financial world, & the wheeler dealings of those corrupt band of sharks known as bankers, but I reckon that those words 'triple dip' & 'recession' don't mean that all in the financial garden of the UK is rosy.
Be that the case, doesn't it show that the financial policies of that bumbling ejjits George Osborne  (aka the Chancellor of the Exchequer) are NOT working. Rather, they are sending the financial state of the UK into free fall. The man clearly hasn't got a clue. Sure he's helped the rich Conservative voters/supporters by increasing the tax threshold for them & no doubt delighted the sadistic side of them when he announces that he plans to push the poor percentage of the population to the brink of malnutrition. Evidence of this is the weekly increase in the number of 'food banks' being established across the UK.
 Today then I had confirmation in my belief that Osborne's policies have failed when it was announced that petrol is going to cost more. By how much???? Well, its reckoned that it'll cost the 'average family' an extra £2 per week to fill up their car with petrol.
But the knock on effect of this is the affect that this increase will have upon small businesses . Businesses which Osborne glibly announces that he wishes to "stimulate" . Some stimulation Mr Osborne.
You know, it works out that the UK motorist pays 60% of the total cost of a litre of petrol to the Government in tax. Tax to pay for a pointless war in Afghanistan, to keep a nuclear deterrent (to deter whom/what?) etc. Whilst at the same time local authorities across the country are closing leisure centres and public libraries, nurses, soldiers close to retirement are being forced into redundancy, (thus losing their pension rights)  police personnel  & other public sector staff are being axed and haven't had a pay rise for 3 years (rather a pay cut in real terms) God Almighty, Cameron et al are really messing this country up!
Oh, & then he crawls on his knees towards that right wing political party known as UKIP trying to get their support by announcing that he'll ask the nation for a "Yes or No vote on continued membership of the EU".

Has much changed???

 Last night I watched the opening 30 minutes of 'Saving Private Ryan'. Then I changed TV channels and watched  news items covering the debacle that is the hostage situation in Algeria & the 'quiet' war in Mali.
And I wondered, & I ask you all no: Has much changed since & between June 6th 1944  & January 20th 2013?
We are still fighting against ruthless Fascist fundamentalist causes & still young men & women die.

"Those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them"

The European Union-The UK in or out??

Cameron & his crowd of Liberal Democrat Party camp followers, true to their wont of speaking with forked tongues seem intent on taking the UK to brink of a financial precipice with  their posturing & threats to withdraw the UK from the European Union. Call me suspicious, but I can't help but think that Cameron is trying to court the nationalist right wing UK Independence Party (UKIP) with this intention.
Now I am totally FOR Britain's continued membership of the EU, I will  never be convinced that our membership is in anyway bad for our country, & by Britain being a member of the Union, the other members of the Union benefit also.
But Cameron & an apparent large percentage of the UK remain unconvinced   . Yet this evening I heard on the news that car manufactures in the UK sold a record number of vehicles in 2012. In fact the number sold was 1,000,000.
 Guess what??-Half of those sold were sold to....the European Union!!
So now people, I ask this question: If we withdraw from Europe where will we in the UK sell our manufactured goods to?

Let kids be kids.

As the old song goes......"The weather outside is freezing and......"
 In line with this people those of you who live in the UK couldn't have failed to notice that winter has (fortunately) arrived. The outside temperature around these parts seldom rises above 3C with bad frosts each night. Being the tight arse get that I am I refuse to line the pockets of the manufactures of car wind-shield  de-icers & so I cover the wind-shield with cardboard  which saves me having to scrape the the ice off in the morning. Clever or wot??
Be that as it is I heard on the radio this morning when they announced the school; closures because of the  cold weather  that 1 school had been closed because of "icy conditions". Bloody hell!. What do they expect its bloody winter!. Icy conditions my arse!!- Why are we treating the next generations as namby-pambies? We're rearing a generation of half soaked, soft kids. When I was a kid there was no finer fun than taking a run at  patch of icy & then sliding. Sure we occasionally bumped ourselves but I don't recall anyone actually braking a limb.
In the same way kids today aren't allowed to throw snow balls at one another. What the fuck is this!!??
Lets let kids be kids.

Old age pensions

We heard today that Cameron's utterly out of touch Government has changed the amount of and age eligibility before a person in the UK gets their old age pension. He plans to raise the basic rate of pension to around £140 per week for a couple from its average  current £105 per week . However at the same time he has announced that what he calls "high wage earner's"-nurses & policeman for example, will have to pay more in National Insurance contributions  in order to get the increase  At the same time he plans to raise the retirement age to 68yrs for everyone!!

I have, (as you might expect!) a couple of comments to make on this, the latest bit of shite to be uttered from Cameron et al.
Firstly, Nurses & other public sector workers, haven'y had a pay rise for the last 3 years-in fact in real terms nurses have had a pay decrease (this from a Government that says it "values nurses"). Secondly I cannot imagine what it must be like for a teacher or nurse to work in a classroom or on a busy medical ward at the age of 68 years of age!! I cannot imagine how a man or woman age 68 years could possibly work outside on the roads when they are 60 odd years old. God help the postman who at 68 years old has to trudge the streets in all weathers carrying  heavy sacks full of junk mail.
This is craziness!! Who said slavery was dead & buried in the UK??
Not in Cameron's 2013 Britain it isn't.

No time to catch your breath ??

 So here we are then.....12 days into the new year...2013. 12th night-The Epiphany just 6 days past and guess what I saw in sale in a local shop this morning??  Bloody Easter eggs!! Jesus Christ casting the money lenders out the temple!!! Its a world gone mad! Its all sell! sell! sell! Consumerism gone psychotic.
When I pointed this out to the guy behind the counter her gave me a smile & a shrug of the shoulders.
O course I brought one....did I fuck! I refuse to be party to this craziness.

How come??

You may recall from earlier posts that we took my 'mother' in to stay with us during October 2012 fol It was an unmitigated disaster. I won't bore you again with why-though to do so would be therapeutic & cathartic for me!
However. She is now in residential care and, suffice to say, I am still allowing her to create mayhem, distress, anger & guilt in me. She claims now (amongst other things that I have never "done anything for (her)".  We visit twice weekly & take her home to our home or take her out for dinner/lunch etc & pay £150 per month out of our pockets to keep in in the lovely, warm, caring place henceforth known as the 'Beeches'.But her continued complaining & ingratitude is one of the rules of the game with narcissistic personality disorders.
Nevertheless, I had a thought.: The local city council pay out £450 per week to fund 'mother' in the 'Beeches'. Now. when we had her staying with us, when we walked her out, washed her clothes, attempted to cater for her emotional needs, provided some sort of normal family relationships in a family home etc etc we received absolutely no financial help from the council.  If any was available then we were not advised about any!
The 'Beeches'. provide a supervised care package but as far as we can observe don't take the residents out to feel the wind in their faces, nor out for a cuppa in a local cafe. they play bingo, have Tai Chi weekly, the 'odd' singer coming in to sing to the residents as well as providing a warm, safe environment. I am not complaining honestly I'm not.
But I am wondering why the council pays them the £450 weekly & didn't help us (& presumably others who care for relatives at home)???

Professionals led by morons

 If I remember it correctly from my school day history lessons the British army in the war of 1914-1918 were described as 'Lions led by donkeys'. That might have been the case, judging by the mass slaughter motivated by imperialistic greed & paranoia. And looking at the state of our world today mankind has learnt bugger all from that  carnage.
A 2013 parallel in my experience is the National Health Service-I know that I have ranted many times about the debacle that I work in but I feel that today I must give further vent to the shite that I find myself working in & to the service that you the poor long suffering British public have to put up with.
I remember a time when the patient cared for in the NHS was the patient- the person receiving treatment.  Not so now though.
We, henceforth known as 'The care providers' by the donkeys who 'manage' us,  have been made slaves to a new computer system costing £5 million plus that is supposed to enable us to spend more time with the patient, improve 'service delivery' to the 'Service user/client'-(THE PATIENT) and of course save money(!)
In practice the system has spawned a new patient 'service user'......The computer-more specifically Its called 'Rio'.
Allow me to elaborate. The patient 'service user/client' is assessed with a nurse on a 1:1 basis for an hour. The outcome of the assessment is then processed onto the 'system' this takes 1hr 30mins. Duplication in this process is the order of the day. The system was designed (& is regularly being modified & added too) by faceless computer nerds who wouldn't recognise someone with a mental health problem even if they were forced to share a prison cell with them. Yet here we have it, theses cretins have put together a system for patient 'service user/client' care without consulting neither 'care providers' nor 'care users/clients.The result being chaos- more time is spent away from the 'service user/client' than is actually spent with them. And today we -the 'care providers' each received an email from our senior mangers (henceforth known as donkeys) informing us that we have to submit further information via the computer system-'Rio' informing them how many minutes we spent with patients and what we did with them when we saw them we saw up to 4 months ago! More time to be spent away from seeing patients.
What is all this motivated by??? Simple....Money! The NHS Trust gets more money from the Dept of Health for statistics submitted than for actual patients seen.
Nauseating.

Further to this I might add that the Dept of Health have today come out & criticised the public for turning up at local Accident & Emergency dept's looking for treatment of "minor complaints". They say that the ill should go to see their own family doctor for treatment. Whilst I agree with the dept in saying this, the comment is ill thought out & stupid. Over the Christmas period Doctors surgeries were closed. Outside of Christmas in order to get an appointment with your family doctor you have to wait for up to 2 weeks. What bloody good is that if you're ill??!! Damn it you want treatment, so people go to a hospital. The doctor's surgeries tell you to phone up at 0830 on the morning when "appointments will be released". But when you do it is impossible to get through as the telephone lines are jammed.
 Bollocks!!

So there we have it. A system in chaos.
A hospital care system staffed by Lions led by donkeys .
Thank you Cameron. Mr Bevan must be spinning in his grave.
Having said that Cameron you have private health care I'm sure.