red ken, bbc, 4x4.

Like the NHS, the armed services and the Police Service ?

Steve

insanity.

I've written my little bit of bait for the 'mentalists to go nuts at. I wonder if they'll post it. They normally do, a few days after it's all gone quiet. Wonder why.

On or around Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:26:47 +0000, steve enlightened us thusly:

It's easy to have rose-tinted-specs, there are plenty of places in the world where the army and the police force are indistinguishable and "work" entirely too well...

They work a damned sight better than the pub bore thinks.

Where I live the NHS seems to work ok, and I have had reason to use them recently, the armed services don't turn up that often unless they being taught to drive (in which case they don't carry guns unless they're in a teeny tiny tankette) and the police ARV teams spend most of their time looking slightly overdressed and doing speed checks.

Move somewhere nice...

I'm afraid you'll have to wait until it gets cold again.

I'm here for most of the next year...

Unfortunately too many Brits live in Tabloid Land, a make-believe world of fear and failure.

Yours is the first comment published under the article... Unless that selection is randomly selected from the 33 it says there are there.

'Tis blinking daft though as the columnist says "when did the congestion= charge become an emmissions tax". People *will* go out a buy a little ti= n box run about for =A35k. It'll pay for itself before it needs it's first= MOT and the warranty runs out where upon another new one will be bought. Gre= en NOT!

Blantent attempt at vote winning.

I've got no complaints with the NHS. My niece has cystic fibrosis and the NHS do a truly magnificent job of looking after her.

I noticed.

A land the Daily Mail wants us to believe in; where every immigrant is a psychotic killer, where every youth in a hooded sweat shirt is just waiting to snatch a bag or mug a granny or attack a fire engine, where every Pole wants to steal your job and every Indian doctor has a fake certificate.

The only thing the Mail and the Sun seem to consider to be 'a good thing' is our army killing black or brown people.

I often wonder where this rather septic view of our island comes from.

Oh aye.. that's good.

Indeed.

No according to the people in 'em.

NHS, well YMMV, our youngest son has had superb treatment at Alder Hey over the last few years, but only because Booth Hall, the nearest hospital's "expert" wasn't someone you'd trust to service your Landy. We can all point to the good bits, but you have to acknowledge the existence of the bad bits and take your fingers out of your ears. A recent 5 hour wait in a very quiet casualty department suggests that there are structural problems - since that "is quite normal" according to the triage nurse on duty.

"Last army reserves sent to Kosovo" today's news

- and there's no one in the armed services saying the MOD is doing a great job at supplying them decent equipment - neither is the coroner who lambasted the MOD this week. Police 40,000 more officers than 1970, but so overburdened with paperwork they can't do their jobs - ACPO ?

Steve

A&E units exist to treat people who are in a life threatening condition.

The reason they keep you waiting for five or more hours is that they're busy making someone in a life threatening condition stable enough to be treated by the rest of the hospital.

They don't keep you hanging about because they want your body heat to keep the building warm.

Who cares?

They're all volunteers, none of then joined for the skiing and there's no credible threat to the UK mainland.

And you trust ACPO to tell you there's not enough coppers?

I have a bridge for sale...

I have BUPA insurance, but despite being investigated for several nasty diseases (and another one under investigation right now) I've never needed to use it. I've been sent in for tests and when it's for something serious then the wait has always been a week or two at the most, and if it was more urgent than that I'd be packaged off immediately. A friend who is diabetic has nothing but praise for the way he's been looked after too and he's a fussy bugger with BUPA care that he's never needed to use.

At the age of 37 and having worked in many cities and lived in Reading, spending quite a lot of time walking about late at night, the only crime I've ever suffered was having £10 pickpocketed from me over

8 years ago. The only issues that I really feel uncomfortable about in this country is the cost of living (offset by higher wages), the encroaching of our freedoms (but we still have more than many places like Germany, France, Spain etc) and the worst is the attitude of the population. It's like what doctors term the "worried well".

There are places where it's bad to live of course, usually due to locals causing trouble, but I've rarely met people who have such problems, most of the moans I hear of are about disputes over parking spaces in built-up areas.

You also have to take your fingers out of your ears though.

A 5-hour wait at a casualty department indicates that they're busy, if you were carried in in an ambulance with a serious problem that needed immediate treatment then you wouldn't wait for 5 hours. Also 5-hour waits are hardly new, a friend who broke his thumb swatting a moth (not untypical of him) waited for about that long but was treated well, and that was almost 10 years ago in Reading. There are a lot of supposedly civilised countries in the world that are a damned sight worse. Our NHS is not the best health service in the world, but somewhere like France has a better health service and far higher taxes as a result. Healthcare costs in France are extremely high, and the burden is borne by all, particularly the wealthy. I am on a number of US-based car mailing lists, and by far the most common reason for people selling their cars is that they've had a medical problem that means they have to sell their car and sometimes their house to meet the bills. People complain about being stuck in a job they hate because it has a good health care plan that they can't afford to lose. Not an issue for us.

No idea re the armed forces as I hear conflicting reports.

Well, the police have a shitload of forms to protect them from us and us from them, they do need to record and back up what they are doing to protect both sides. They're human too, and almost all of my direct dealings with the police (other than speeding fines) have been a bad experience, being charged for speeding when the officer admitted that I wasn't but couldn't do me for having a scruffy car, being told not to drive on the hard shoulder when I wasn't (and being threatened with court cases, points on my license, jail time etc if I didn't back down, which I didn't), and just recently on some web boards a new phenomenon has arisen, people being reported and cautioned by police because of malicious reports of illegal off-roading despite routes being clearly byways. Also some recent media reports about the hours policemen spend filling in forms showed that on average it only amounts to a few hours a week. Most of the complaints on the police blogs used to be centred around having to meet targets.

Oi! We don't jump on typos here. Well, not unless they are capable of a really filthy or humorous interpretation, anyway, in which case a quiet "fnarr fnarr" is usually sufficient.

Alder Hey is about 1/2 a mile from me.

Sorry, I spend too long wandering around UKRM..