#savenhsdirect

On exactly 100% of the occasions that we have phoned NHS Direct for advice we have been told to take the patient to see a medical professional in person. Not really a very useful service in my experience.

I'm just saying.

autumn

The Met Office issued severe weather warnings and predicted up to 80mm (3.1in) of rain would fall in just a few hours. National forecaster Stephen Holman said: "We are facing some very unsettled weather for the foreseeable future. I think we can safely say our summer is finished."

Err. Yes. Where have you been for the last three weeks? Do keep up. There's a good chap.

up or down

Some online shopping retailer has funded a survey covered in The Sun that found that leaving a toilet seat up is the most annoying habit that men have according to women. 54% of sexist females believed that men should not only avoid pissing on the seat but also put it down once they have finished. Luckily the shopping site has a device that emits a green light when the seat is down and a red one when it is up to remind us forgetful chaps that we have forgotten to do something.

Ladies. In this age of equality that we currently live surely you can move a toilet seat without the intervention of a man?

cycling proficiency

According to an article on the Telegraph website the Cycling Proficiency Scheme, or Bikeability as it is now known, faces the axe in the 'bonfire of the quangos'. Good. It's a pile of shit.

A few years ago my daughter passed hers with top marks and wanted to ride her bike to school so I took her out to help her familiarise herself with the hazards on the route. I've never been so scared on the roads with another rider than I was with her that day. She had so little basic road sense it made me wonder if the children who only just scraped a pass would survive a the journey.

If we want kids to ride bikes we need to provide them top quality instruction not worry if their brake cables are correctly terminated (yes, there is a clipboard checklist). The Cycling Proficiency Scheme is clearly not fit for purpose and should go.

life deals another blow

bottled

Beer - the mystical elixir that magically appears at the pub or off-licence for us to consume.


I've helped out at the Adur Brewery a few times recently with different aspects of the production process and this week I had a go at bottling the beer. By the end of the day we'd managed to fill nearly 1000 bottles, 500 litres, with glorious liquid with the rest being left for filling casks the next day. Bottles need to be cleaned and sterilised, then filled, capped, labelled and stored - a whole lot of hard work goes into the production process.

education cuts

"THE Tory axe on school building projects will fall overwhelmingly in ­Labour seats, a Sunday Mirror probe reveals. So far, 406 of the 736 schools facing Michael Gove’s savage cuts are in Labour areas. Children in more than half of Labour’s 191 English constituencies will suffer, while just a quarter of their 297 Tory counterparts will be hit. Our review shows nearly six in 10 of schools earmarked for cuts are in Labour ­constituencies, 39 per cent are in Tory areas and 6 per cent in Lib Dem seats"

So, Sunday Mirror, this cut in spending on schools has nothing to do with the outgoing Labour government throwing cash around in Labour seats in an attempt to buy votes does it? I mean, it's not as if Gordon Brown and his cabinet spent recklessly to try to halt their rapidly evaporating popularity was it? It's interesting that you've chosen to look at the number of English constituencies affected when comparing the disparity rather than the whole area controlled by parliament as it highlights the fact that England categorically rejected the Labour party at the election. Aren't you supposed to be a left wing paper?

Looking at the figures 55%, a little over half, of the building projects that are set to be cut are in English Labour seats and 45%, a little under half, are in English coalition seats. Projects that there was no money to fund but were given the go-ahead anyway have been cut. This is a good thing not a bad thing.

nearly one for mark wadsworth!

As I was driving across the top of the Downs this morning I had to brake sharply because of this escaped group of cows that were wandering to and fro across the road .. .. ..

it should be mandatory surely?

Vote in the poll here.

23 years his junior......

Witnesses were so outraged that they did not leave their contact details.

a change of government, a change of ideas?

The Telegraph reports comments by the Prime Minister who seems to have the same attitude towards alcohol taxation as the previous Prime Minister.

“Where I want to try and help is ending the deep discounting on alcohol - people going and “preloading”, having bought from a supermarket where they were attracted by a price designed to bring them into the store."

The other way to approach the issue is to reduce the tax burden on pubs so that they can bring their prices down and make pre-loading less financially attractive. But that's never going to happen, is it?

and headline writers?

Nice to see the Telegraph on top form.

Stonehenge

We took the kids to Stonehenge today. Not the religious experience for us that some say they find there. It felt very much like English Heritage have set up a conveyor belt to process visitors around the monument as swiftly as possible. I have a vague memory of visiting as a child and being allowed to wander freely through the stones but this might not be accurate.
After we'd been graciously allowed to pass around we jumped back in the car and headed north to Avebury which is a much more relaxed atmosphere. You can wander freely through the stones there .. .. we stopped and had a picnic in the shadow of one of them .. .. a far more rewarding experience for us.