11 August 2011

The rioting and looting continued last night. A special magistrates Court was set up to deal with those who have been arrested, most were remanded in custody to be tried in the Crown Courts where the sentences will be more severe. One of the biggest problems is what to do with the nine and 10-year-olds. They cannot be remanded in custody and if they are bailed out there is nothing to stop them continuing their illegal activities-they are you simply not scared of the consequences. To kids in this age it is probably the most exciting time of their life. Wii games will feel very tame by comparison!

Predictably, the opposition, the Labour Party, are squeezing as much political advantage as they can out of the situation, calling for the government to reverse its plans to cut the police budget, in line with every other public service body in the country. The Conservatives retort to that is that there are substantial savings to be made in the administration and ‘back office’ without a reduction in the front line police force.

We all have examples of where we observe money being wasted. I can give you two such examples from my own personal experience. About a year ago I asked the NHS to remove the expensive remote control equipment they had fitted into my office as I can no longer get there. Months later I rang again to remind them and they said they were trying to find an alternative alarm system to carry about my person – at present I have a button on my wrist which will alarm a monitor carried about by the carer, but with my hands getting weaker all the time I’m finding it increasingly difficult to press sufficiently hard to set it off. Again nothing has happened and I shall have to ring them for the third time today. In the meantime I suspect the NHS are paying a substantial amount of money to lease this equipment, all of which is being wasted.

Another area of waste concerns the annual checks on the equipment loaned to us by the NHS. I can understand that electrical equipment must be checked regularly but why do we have to have a different engineer for each and every one of them. I know if I raise this with the powers of the I will be told that they all come from different subcontractors however, it is not beyond the wit of man to enter into a contract for one person to do the annual check and maintenance on all the equipment on one visit. We even have an engineer coming today to check over the manual wheelchair! Multiply my experience by 1 million and there must be some very substantial savings that could be made in this area alone

Closer to home, two of Alice’s friends, Christine Alexander and Beatrice Goldie, came to tea and spent ise little time chatting to me in the study. They are both intelligent and amusing ladies with strong views about most things so it was a welcome break as I too could be called opinionated!

I watched the cricket on and off during the day. England had a splendid start in that Strauss and Cook batted through the morning session taking the lunchtime score to 157/0. This must be some sort of record, with the openers batting through two sessions unscathed. These two carried on after lunch until Strauss was out for 87. A fine partnership of 186, just 38 runs short of Indians first innings total. England ended the day 456/ 3 a lead of 232. Cook who started batting the day before yesterday ended the day 182 not out, leaving England in a very strong position,

Talent and grace comes in many forms. This is video is an excellent example of that. Not only is the performance excellent—you’ll want to watch it to the end–, the video is very well (professionally) done.

Ah, to just be this agile again!

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Cj6ho1-G6tw&vq=medium