Getting into the spirit of Christmas thanks to the snow

The Arctic lets its tongue loll out, gas cools to crystals, paints the world white for once.
Everything is changed, charged with light, made new.
Work slides away.
Winter has come to play.

I had a post here about snow. The obvious: everyone except emergency services should stay home and play when it snows in the UK. It should be perfeckly clear now that wheels are not suited to snow, being as how they require friction. The best transport on snow is slidy things like Nordic skis, which make getting about - up and down slopes, and along flat ground - fun. Except where cars and scrapers have cleared the snow away.

 Then we can enjoy this sort of thing.

I was on my skis on the hill, looking over to Bristol Lulsgate Airport a few miles to the north, where hundreds of dispirited and frustrated would be travellers are waiting to go ...skiing in foreign parts. Ha.

Normally at this time of year I am heading for Christmas gloom, a combination of dark days, and rebellion at the consumer fest. Notably TheSpite of Christmas Present , Baby Jesus Bunny in the headlights and my own special Solistice Ballad.  

This year has been better, thanks to the snow, and also to inspiration from Christmas enthusiasts like Dalekette.

Yesterday I went up the hill through snow laden trees, watched Joe and Laurie (sons) take off in paraglider, walked dog back down snowy path pub to meet up with un-dead sons, then home to roast vegetables, chess, relax and chat by warm wood fire. Sprigs of holly.

So, though not exackly HoHoHo, this is me getting into the spirit of Christmas.

And here is a lovely Christmas gift from the Cleggeron to all good children everywhere. Peace and Goodwill.

The NHS is a slowly boiled frog. WAKE UP YOU NHS USERS!

Guardian: Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, announced today that the government will push ahead with radical plans to shake up the NHS – the biggest shift in power and accountability in its 62-year history – despite opposition from almost every part of the health service.

The NHS needs another immense top down bureaucratic Lansley reform  like it needs a hole in the head drilled with a hand held brace using a blunt 1"auger and no anaesthetic. 

As an NHS GP, I view Lansleys NHS changes with sullen resignation. I learned in the 90s from an experienced BMA leader that each and every NHS reform is another ratchet notch in the gradual privatisation of the NHS. It is like a frog in pan of water over a flame - the temperature is increasing so slowly that the frog makes no effort to escape.

In essence, the GPs will be obliged to give contracts either to private corporations or to NHS institutions. That is where the privatisation is creeping in.


How can we mobilise the people of Britain to stand up for the NHS? Will they write to their MPs? Would that have any real effect? Will they join demonstrations? If so, will the notorious interaction between provoking agents and police chiefs result in kettling and violence? If not, if the demonstrations are peaceful, will they be reported by the media?

I feel powerless and hopeless in this situation. Which is odd, because I believe that it is possible and worthwhile to call for things like global abolition of WMD, the Global Human Rights Index, and positive intervention of the UN to prevent wars of secession. I also believe that the Cuts can be ended and a rational economic response to the budget deficit put in place. But I cannot believe that the people will stand up to defend their NHS. Or can I?

The total insanity of Lansley's  change can be summed up in a number: £3,000,000,000. Three billion £ooniesmackeroonis is the cost of his upheaval. At a time of financial austerity. This money is going to come from the NHS budget, which will also shrink with inflation, demography and technological progress. So it means poorer services and job losses.

In place of Lansley's folly, the NHS needs continual re-moulding led by coal face workers, who will be encouraged to put forward practical solutions aimed at improving efficiency and efficacy.

If only. If only reason prevailed. But we live in an Alice in Wonderland world of neo-liberal, free market fundamentalist ideology, with all-powerful Government, paretic official Opposition, and a gullible, debate-averse media. The people, the NHS service users, the patients, the satisfied customers, are without information and hope.

Or are they?

The situation is that the normal democratic channels have failed. The only chance of preventing Lansley's folly becoming law is through a series of massive, peaceful demonstrations of peoples' desire to keep the NHS.

These demos should be on a set day, beginning outside the constituency offices  of Conservative and LibDem parties. Gather there, have a couple of speeches, then march to the local offices of radio, TV and paper outlets, to make sure that the action gets reported. The chances are that peaceful demonstrations would otherwise go unreported.

In order to make sure that there is no kettling, protesters who are on medications may choose to leave their evening doses at home. This means that the police are obliged by law to release you from the kettle. Be warned that it is not always easy to communicate with the police when in a kettle.


Do not let the fear of trouble keep you from defending the your free health service.  We live in a democracy, and we have a fundamental right to be able to assemble peacefully on the streets to press our MPs to represent our wishes.

If you have a relative or friend in the police, or if you are in the police service yourself, please, please join the protest to save the NHS.  Your presence is worth 10 of anyone else, because you can appeal directly for calm.

In addition to public protests, we also need widespread acts of peaceful, non threatening civil disobedience in support of the NHS.

Such as the General Tea Break.

So I have just woken from my long sleep of despair at the impending demise of the NHS, and ask myself, Is it possible, just possible, that patients will stand up for their free health service?


Links


The Unite union is making a good start.

Rant against the Inefficiencies of privatisation

I have just finished a long and confusing telephone conversation with a nice young man from my electricity supplier (and receiver) at Scottish and Southern. He was checking up details on my electricity exports (I have 3.4Kw of plotovoltaic). He was unaware that my billing agent was Ebico. I have lost about one year of exports because Ebico did not know that I was a generator.
Scottish & Southern's paperwork (?no computers?) was all sheets to the wind, he left me hanging on for ~10 mins while he consulted his supervisor.

We settled that I would be deemed to have started exporting from April 1st 2010 (about 2.5 years later than I actually did start exporting. I will be paid 9p for all electricity that I generate, and 3p for electricity that I export to the grid, as opposed to 41p paid to late adopters. I chose to "opt out" of something (I do not fully understand what, but was in no mind to opt in to anything at this stage) which means that I will have to change suppliers next march.

I was an early adopter, and am punished for being a sustainability pioneer. First I lost about £5000 because I put my deposit down just before the bastards cut the subsidy, then I lost out through the inefficiency of my billing company not realising that I was a generator, and now we have this insulting disparity between the amount paid to late adopters and early adopters. Sure, there should be a difference until the subsidy is paid off (late adopters do not get a subsidy) but even so there is not even a semblance of equity (aka fairness).

I am revolted by the Byzantine complexity and inefficiency of the marketisation of the privatised energy supply industry. I feel angry at a system which is quite clearly, mad. Irrational. Unreasonable. Inefficient. Which is still sold by Tories and their LibDem running dogs as efficient.

The young man, who is in the energy supply industry, had never even heard of the idea of people storing excess electricity. How can we be so backward? Surely the UK plc is heading steadily towards 3rd World status, courtesy of the Coalition, and before it, NuLabour.

OK. Rant over. I will now go out and collect sticks and stuff.

A Toxic News Day

Leafing through the Guardian this morning leaves me feeling decidedly uneasy/queasy.

Look:

• Suicide bomber in Sweden
• MI5 helped kill civil rights lawyer Pat Finucane
• Ugly protest violence provoked by fact that police blocked agreed march route
• Police are restricting victims' access to the Coulson files
• More media attention to Charles and Camilla than to the philosophy student Alfie Meadows, nearly killed by a police club
• Mad pastor Terry Jones wants to come visit
• WikiLeaks on corruption in Uzbekistan, Tadjikistan and Azerbaijan
• Modern British attitudes are more Thatcherite than in the 1990s]
• Parliament is without an effective opposition to the most toxic Government since Thatcher
• Cancun
• Berlusconi is clinging to power
• and to round it all off, Peter Preston mentions the elephant in the room - overpopulation

This is all too much for me to digest today, so I am going to go to the post office and then collect some wood. And change the compost pail in the toilet. And therapeutic stuff like that.