Care Staff

(This is an non-apologetic re-run of a 2008 post by me).

I visited my ex-wife's father in hospital the other week. It was fantastic to see him, and we shared the same delight in each other's company that we found 23 years ago. He remarked that the care-team had to do unbelievably horrible jobs; those things thrown away under the title "Personal Care". In addition these same people are lifting, restraining, talking-around, cheering-up, dispensing (illegally), bathing, walking, feeding, singing-to/with, anyone and everyone (that's your Mum & Dad and mine) who finds themselves unable to NOT GET OLDER.
Lets be brave here. There are some jobs (changing soiled beds, wiping soiled bottoms) that are done every minute of the day by (usually females) earning the National Minimum Wage.
Just like all (shall we say "jobs" ?) that allow non-qualified entry there is a fair share of hangers-on, can't be bothered (the "am I bothered?" types)and in addition an unjustifiable amount of unfair, unjust, thoughtless, painful, careless treatment dished out to most older people every minute of every day in just about every HOME up and down the UK.


Sprinkled amongst the above these is also (there would HAVE TO BE) a tranch of well-loved, caring, emotionally intelligent, hard-working carers who are THERE BECAUSE IT IS WHO THEY ARE. The natural carers of this world, making astonishing differences to the everyday lives of their charges. They are rare indeed, but worth at least FOUR TIMES the National minimum wage, and equal respect to any professional.

'Select your Country' - setting up new web accounts.

It happened about a year ago didn't it?

Did you notice?

Where the 'UK' was once findable in the top few countries of such a list (above), NOW you need to scroll through everything (hope that it's listed alphabetically) - hope that we're even listed at all?

3rd-rate country.  It was always coming.

Spelling

I get a perhaps half-a-dozen opportunities to address this everyday - and to my eternal chagrin - I've only just focussed enough on this horrendous situation to THINK about it.

Odd spellings (and the inclusion of odd words) liberally pepper any set of documents I call in.

The student has typed - at high speed, scanned the document - caught the red-lining, and right-clicked, then chosen the first word they think approximates what belongs there.

I really don't know what to do about it.  I know in my heart, 30% of 19 year olds will leave College doing this - and never, NEVER learn the words.

I don't know which is worse - the fear that maybe I'm not doing a good enough job, or the sulky knowledge that so many, many young 'managers' will all be doing the same, and maybe my thoughts are all an age thing.

The Two F's

Just a brief post - and a couple of numbers to ponder over.

The Government wants to sell off forest worth £250 million in order to ensure Defra can meet its target of making 30 per cent savings on its annual budget by 2015, as outlined in the recent Spending Review.  (Actually, if the NT get it, I don't suppose we'd notice the difference).
and.......
Football clubs spent more than £210 million in the January transfer window.


What a world eh?

Two new British varieties

Two new female brands now firmly established.

Brand A - Foul-mouthed, hard-headed, intimidating, not averse to resorting to physical violence.
Rough, thoughtless driving, severely limited attention span, no manners, no concious knowledge of anyone else sharing same space/hearing distance, spitting distance. 
Sexual predator, later career mother, career benefits user, weekend drunkard. 
Language pattern = 4 words, stop, sneer, five words (maximum), then a final three - maybe used together with 'Essex' type or pseudo-carribean accent.

Brand B - Perpetually orange, self-obsessed, overly image-concious, affected hand movements (hands to face, 'fanning' movement), affected speech patterns (OMG, the upward tilt of a suggestion of a sneer at the end of each sentence, the beginnings of a 'california girl' slur or intonnation), or perhaps a 'friends' style of using each and every phrase to a)subject recipient to critisms, b) show the speaker in a 'special' light c) affect a superior role whilst d)finding absolutely everything embarressing and e) doing all this whilst wearing nothing much at all except f)impecable makeup - 24/7, and g) fashionable soft flat pumps during the worst snows for twenty-five years.
Parents - had it too good, for too long, for not enough effort (including parenting).  This is now deeply bred into the offspring as an overly concious knowledge of 'rights' and an amazement that things don't just fall at their feet, completed, and successful - and the new owner of these gifts possibly already a rich superstar.   Substitute traits between A & B at will.

Stickies

Do you use a sticky-notes, or yellow post-it notes type desktop program?

Well, even if you don't, this one might well convert you.

To quote directly from Tom Revell's website - "The design goal behind Stickies is that the program is small and simple. Stickies will not mess with your system files, or write to the registry. Stickies stores information in a single text-based ini file.

Stickies will never support animated dancing figures, or play "Greensleeves". They are instead yellow rectangular windows onto which you can put some text notes. Once created, they will stay on screen until you take them away. Just like a real sticky piece of paper."

Give this powerful, bug-free program a try. It is superb.

http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies/

Catty Men

Carefully edging forward - what laws do I SKIRT around?

Ok - here's a question: what do the following Celebrities have in common?
Alan Carr, Graham Norton, Louie Spence, Gok Wan, Paul O'Grady.

Right - they're (all, or mostly) outrageously camp, filthy-joked, sneeringly-voiced, bitchy, over-paid, under-talented media items. Famous for being all those things I just typed - and bugger-all else.

Currently this tawdry little crowd are infiltrating most 'mainstream' TV and radio airtime, to the extent that one has to wonder at this latest flood.
It seemed to start a little while back: We were tested with Dale Winton's Radio persona (mildly irritating, although his TV presence warm and unthreatening) - as this was 2008, I wonder if media bosses noticed the pull - and decided to vamp things up a bit?

After-all, our British media history has been liberally peppered with the homosexual double-endre.
Remember being left cold by John Inman? - When 'Are you being served' was but one of an enormous batch of British sit-coms whose humour-value unfailing missed by a million miles any thoughtful ideas about what was funny.
Or cringing at Larry Gayson - who Straight, Gay, Martian, Black, White (whatever) could never be described as funny.
Or wincing at Julian Clary's jokes, but finding his saving grace the sheer scatological nature of his comment, at least the laughs came?

So, if the content is funny - then the delivery style may enhance that. OK so far. But what about Messrs Norton, Wan, O'Grady, Carr, Spence? No 'content' here, per-se, just a style - a style that favours sneering, that takes the extremes of earlier 'alternative' comedians, washes them out a little, and hangs them onto a character as vehicle for any other tosh the media can think-up that needs a current-fashion 'type' to push it.

Why write about this at all? Because I HATE it. Because, we're teaching yet another sub-group how to act and react. And I see it echoed on the streets - just like the ladettes, the lager louts, the head-shaven ear-ringed 50 somethings, the orange-tanned would-be essex-types. It is so apparent now, the trashier we make our TV, the more brash and arrogant UK society becomes - because 'life', for want of a better choice, IS imitating 'Art'.