Tsars, Tsars Galore and not a Drop to Drink

More asleep than awake, an urgent bladder relieving itself, thankfully not into some unfortunately located wardrobe. At such moments I have usually found full wakefulness to be almost entirely superfluous, preferring to take comfort from the fact that I'll soon again be warmly tucked up in my bed. 

Thus, I could well have done without that added issue of also having been 'accosted.' I'd assumed the time to be somewhere in the unholy region of 02:30 of a Tuesday morning.
"Mum, mum, mum! Are you alright? Is William okay?"

Yet, with a dawning realisation, some sort of grasp of the situation was slowly beginning to assert itself. I'd sleepily surmised who the "mum" might transpire  to be but as for "William," he was highly likely to have to remain a mystery for the foreseeable future. Obviously, a full and frank reply was not yet on the cards. An immediate reply of any kind had seemed highly impractical, perhaps unhelpful in the extreme. The last thing that the confused lady was going to require was a disembodied reply, shouted from behind a locked toilet door. Far more of an element of patience was going to be required; a few further moments of lip biting seeming the prudent choice, at least until my current needs had been fully dealt with. The situation could far more easily be confronted face to face, I'd considered. 


Many thanks to Thomas Marthinsen

"Where's dad?" the recumbent and shadowy figure demanded of me; a veritable portfolio of awkward questions was now more rapidly beginning to accumulate.

I crossed fingers and leaped in, hoping that this might deflect any need for yet further enquiries.
"He's still at the hospital, isn't he, mum?" I ventured. Armed with the honourable sword of truth, I'd opted for a gargantuan slice, deep into that billowing cloud of confusion. 

In truth, dealing with the rapidly fragmenting NHS had proven well beyond my capabilities. T'was convoluted beyond reason, I'd found. Dad, desperately anxious regarding mum's ailing abilities to cope, had sat quietly bemused as I repeatedly fell well short of orchestrating the much hoped for discharge. I didn't, at 02:30 of a Tuesday morning, think that I really needed to trouble mum with the minutiae of our current dilemma. 


Also thank to kevinkarnsfamily

So, with her mind swimming ineffectually between dream and some sort of alternative reality, mum's confused shouts pursued me, determinedly, back to my bed. Devoid of any of the 'right' sort of 'answers,' I was determined not to proffer any further information, hoping beyond hope that I was not, at such an inhospitable hour, going to be 'trailed' back to my room. 

Later reference to notes taken at the time, studied in conjunction with a handy copy of this year's calendar, would seem to suggest that it had eventually taken in the region of three-and-a-half days to legitimately reunite my parents, once again ensconced within their own apartment. Memory, or that remaining after severe sleep deprivation, contradicts this, suggesting instead some significant deviation to the universally accepted laws of time. The initial physical discharge took place late the following afternoon, but the pathway to absolute completion was going to prove to be a heavily mine-strewn route. 

Finally legitimising dad's discharge, through the turgid process of completed voluminous paperwork and countless phone calls, managed to tack a further day-and-a-half onto the process. Late- almost beyond hope late- on the Wednesday afternoon I was eventually assured that the much sought 'Home Care Package'- that required by a litigiously-concerned NHS hospital- was finally in place. Dad was scheduled to be visited by a registered, sub-contracted carer at some time around 11:00 on the Thursday. Obviously I would not be entertaining the idea of leaving before I'd witnessed this event taking place.


Many thanks, inkknife_2000

It continues to astound me that such anxiety should result from what effectively transpires to have been a lack of 'necessary' paperwork, when this very same system, or perhaps some privatised sub-contracted branch of the same, might so easily have cut my mother adrift with such timely precision, immediately upon my father's admission to hospital.

When I had arrived at my parent's apartment, early on the Monday morning, it had been much appreciated by the confused and unvisited lady, staring with uncomprehending bemusement at a frozen TV screen, a powerless phone lying on the couch, ineffectually remote from its charger. Mum was eager to assure me that she had been coping; there was, after all, an ample supply of frozen white bread in the freezer and the toaster was still fully functional. And there was always the option of an impossible 'pop' to the shops, armed with a debit card that had long since been surgically separated from its pin number.

The 'insurmountable' administrative hurdle that had so 'efficiently' brought about such a state of affairs was that dad's 'Home Care Package' had been specific to dad, one of my numerous telephone conversations had been at pains to inform me. This had been 'clearly' and unambiguously recorded somewhere in triplicate, secreted within the mountains of 'necessary' NHS paperwork, I was assured. Litigation-guarding paperwork takes out long-term spouse and moves to threaten functioning NHS, checkmate!


And many thanks to Joel Franusic

I would imagine that there will be many individuals out there, who will have felt justified in questioning the machinations of any system that can so pin-point-accurately soothe actions and finances in the one direction, whilst habitually stumbling and mystifying not dissimilar actions and finances where the flow needs to have been reversed. Cite the clockwork-like transference of funds, from your bank account and into the black-hole-cyberworld of any multinational company with which you may have dealings. Contrast this with the blundering dinosaur that might eventually and ineffectually crank any monetary flow into reverse and you will understand fully my concerns. It is almost as if these two aspects of the one are operating in two separate parallel universes.  

Ultimately, three-and-a-half days and in excess of a dozen phone calls, two trips to the hospital-in-question and approaching a dozen face-to-face meetings with various carers fell pitifully short of managing to reverse a solitary decision that had been so honed as to require no consultation whatsoever, the instant removal of dad's 'Home Care Package.' With regards to whether it is my accumulated notes or those of the sub-contracted, out-tendered and fragmented NHS that have achieved the greater volume I would imagine there can be no doubt. I suspect that my notes, however, will be all the more accessible and pertinent regarding the issue of what might constitute actual 'care.'       

That a 'care'-based establishment should so shamelessly and 'efficiently' be observed to cut any vulnerable pensioner completely adrift, whilst ensuring a paperwork-tight-shield from litigation, is surely proof that 'our' fragmenting NHS system is falling woefully short of fulfilling its designated task.

As with oh-so-many perniciously privatised bodies the carefully concealed shortfalls tend to reveal themselves gradually, and through a convoluted series of half-spoken telephone conversations or lawyerly-written legalese. And such proved to be the case here. Thus, it was not until the Wednesday morning that it was finally made crystal clear to me that dad's 'Home Care Package' had become severely less than the previous sum of its parts. A 'new' sub-division (department, unit, sub-contractor, whatever) unveiled itself; 'Enablement Care,' whereby a stopgap amorphous unit steps in to bridge the four-week gap, before the previous system- capable of shutting itself down in the wink of an eye- is able to slowly crank itself up and into action. This is an astonishing efficiency tail-off of some 22,000%. Paperwork eh, one has to laugh... or cry... or conceivably die in some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.


Special thanks to Dave77459

In my role as unacknowledged and unpaid care-worker, I was also able to 'appreciate,' at first hand, just a tiny fraction of the daily issues with which our admin-shackled ailing army of care workers might be confronted, a few of the temperament-testers with which these social workers might be required to wrestle.

There was the casual racism- no less embarrassing for my having already known of its presence- the nightly worry of potential overdose by a mother who might elect to administer her own painkillers from amongst an array of more than a dozen variable medicines, including 60mg tablets of Oxy-codone (a tablet that might tranquillise a cart-horse or send a super-heavyweight boxer into a coma).

Both of my parents had been saddled with a daily medical regime that might have posed serious problems for many top contestants appearing on the Krypton Factor. My own somewhat modest regime was eventually completely subsumed beneath the onslaught of almost-entirely-pain-related 'requests.' There was the constant demand for shopping; items that for no spoken reason 'needed' to be acquired singly, each requiring its own personal trip to the local supermarket. There was, of course, the ritualistic 'ingratitude' that might follow the most intimate of medical demands, the waiter-like requirements that might see half a bottle of medicine-neutralising whisky disappear of an evening.


Finally, thanks to University of Salford

These were my own parents, I'd never known another, and yet, within such a relatively short time, I found myself being urged towards ever more inappropriate actions. The almost-within-my-grasp lure of the open road, at times, seemed pitifully incapable of slaking such unnatural thirsts. That others might daily find themselves confronted with similar (or far worse) circumstances, efforts valued at little more than the minimum wage, remains incomprehensible to me. Weighted down by the politically-devised forests of 'required' paperwork, frustrated by a growing army of administrators, and always just a small oversight away from becoming the national press's next hate figure. 

  
Harry Beck began the process of mapping the London Underground in 1931, a somewhat organic process that is still being tinkered with today. Should anyone be brave enough to attempt to similarly graphically represent 'our' creaking NHS, I doubt they will be anywhere vaguely as near to a comprehensible result a mere 82 years hence. That is unless the destructive efforts of the likes of JC can be completely reigned in (sign the '38 Degrees' petition), perhaps chained in a subterranean dungeon somewhere, or sealed within one of those nuclear waste bunkers. Do we dare hope that the likes of a toxic JC might be restricted to a radioactive half life of similar duration?

Currently the NHS is cursed with twenty handsomely-reimbursed, so-called Tsars, and counting. None has yet suggested that, in order to bring about the highest standards of possible care for our ageing population, we might consider attracting the best available carers, and, further, valuing the efforts of those currently beavering away under the considerable weight of generated bureaucracy, by paying them a decent living wage.

"If we want to attract the most capable, then salaries will have to be commensurate with expectations." Difficult to pin this quotation down and, let's face it, on the surface it seems most unlikely to have been uttered by anyone currently residing in the coalition. Somewhat of a shock then, to discover that that's exactly where it came from. But, before excitement- more likely disbelief- takes hold, allow me to clarify that whoever uttered these 'wise' word was referring to the salaries of MPs. Apparently there is just a little bit left in that Public Sector pot after all. It almost beggars belief, doesn't it?

If I'm going to be expected to muck in occasionally, with a bit of hands-on care, perhaps testing my patience to some sort of snapping point, the very least I would like to ask for is responsibility for the singular personal care of one Jeremy Hunt (JC).

Coffee anyone?    

A Bloody Nose

And here we are, yet again. Destiny?

It's time- best not leave it too long- to start gearing up for another Red Nose Day. Schools, as has become another British tradition, will be joyfully ditching the National Curriculum- leastways, in a number of educational establishments, it'll be severely subjugated. All manner of really-quite-comfortably-off celebrities will be interrupting that primeval drive towards another 'home,' another million, another (bigger, faster, more-modern, swisher) yacht, car, pair of dark glasses, in order to attempt to remind the nation that, "There are individuals far worse off than yourselves."

It's been twenty-five years, you might be surprised to learn, since the Red Nose Appeal kicked off and started to roll back those pernicious evils of poverty. And absolutely millions of pounds have been raised by, for example, Tony Blair featuring in a TV sketch with Catherine Tate, Gary Barlow 'climbing' Mount Kilimanjaro, and Bono, Bob Geldof and Ricky Gervais faking, ostensibly for comic effect, an African poverty encounter. All manner of British school kids, including many of those who often arrive at school without having had a proper breakfast, will be pestering their mothers to bake red cakes and then paying over the odds to eat these self-same items.


Thank you to rsambrook

I fully expect that this year, as has also almost become another British tradition, the country will be striving to again surpass its best to date, hoping to exceed even the towering one-hundred-and-eight-million pounds raised in 2011. Since 1993 the doughty British-fund-raiser has repeatedly been more than equal to the task of bettering all past efforts. At the Red Nose launch, in 1988, a whopping fifteen-million was raised, and by 2011 the annual total achieved had astonishingly increased by more than sevenfold. Mind-blowing! Just think about the size of the dent, in the flanks of world poverty, that this kind of sum should create.


And also to Marcus Vegas

Who amongst us could possibly predict, with any degree of certainty, that 2013 will (or won't) be equal to such an immense challenge as to continue this magnificent trend, to surpass that one-hundred-and-eight million? Given that the likes of Osborne, Cameron, JC and Clegg are busying themselves with a poorly-disguised orchestrated-extension to the current recession- the very, very best circumstances under which to swiftly transfer immense sums of money from the threadbare pockets of the poorest and into the well-nourished hands of the most wealthy- we might easily assume that 2013's Red Nose Day will perhaps fall short and buck such recent trends. But the proud British fund-raiser has a well-deserved reputation for defying the odds. Either way, mid-March will be revealing the spoils. Fingers crossed!

It is an undeniable fact that the presented face of the Red Nose Appeal is as an aspirational thrust towards that of a better world. Yet a limited analysis of global trends, in an ostensibly rabidly-monetarist world, I would contest, will reveal that the 'needs'- those hoping to be met by any funds raised- will be ever set to far outstrip any level of successful fund raising. The Yin and the Yang of the global marketplace, if you please. The imperfectly 'interdependent' opposing faces upon the global coin.


Also to Giuseppe Nicoloro

Involving a great deal less (mis)interpretation and guesswork, allow me to adopt a somewhat Nostradamian pose and to here predict that, should the Red Nose Appeal continue to raise funds, with such increased vigour, for another twenty-five years, that global poverty will forever be there, festering to thwart so much of its efforts.

Having personally been involved, annually and in a variety of guises, with Red Nose activities, my aim is not entirely to knock the event. Certainly it is my experience that the vast majority of those involved work without any expectation of reward and with the most honourable of intents, often well beyond what is reasonable to have expected or hoped of them. Mine is thus, more, a 'polite' questioning of the climate, within which the Red Nose Appeal 'hopes' or 'expects' to succeed.

What I fear we have created here is a paradox, a paradox that I will now attempt to unravel. Although, if you can, perhaps, recall the general thrust of the humour in the earlier-referenced Gervais et al sketch, you may already be more or less up to speed. It is curious, is it not- and more than a touch disconcerting- just how seamlessly the beneficiaries of such huge global inequality appear to have managed to incorporate any reference to this self-same issue into the Red Nose comic sketch? Watch the sketch and you'll see what I mean...


Thank you ell brown

Although politicians and 'celebrities' alike appear loathe to point out such an oversight, there is a massive flaw within the very concept of such a fund-raising event as the Red Nose Appeal. It is almost as if the 'aspirational' and aesthetically 'perfect' edifice that has been constructed has completely omitted to acknowledge the shifting sands that lie in the stead of the required foundations. Those most over-eager to be equated with the appeal (Tony, Bono, Gary Barlow, such like, with their dubious tax arrangements) appear universally to have elected not to question the basic premise of an unequal global market economy. Yet it would be this very same global economy of unequal division of wealth that has been ostensibly responsible for the two major and interdependent contributing factors to current global poverty.

Firstly, and most regularly highlighted, there is the growing consequence of escalating world poverty, whereby many are underpaid, starving, inadequately fed or housed, unable to acquire even the basic requirements for a minimal standard of living. Secondly, and yet painfully under-analysed, there are the entirely interconnected recipients of uber-volumes of global wealth and property (that would be yachts and cars and landmasses and top restaurant access and monetary wealth and superfluous possession and, and, and etc). Despite (perhaps as a consequence of) recent trends we have seen these wealthy-individual-'requirements' spiralling ever further heavenwards. And this in an entirely finite world, don't forget!

Upon the global monetary elastic band- my chosen analogy- with the over-zealous acquisitors ranged at one extreme and the might-not-live-another-day starving ranged at the other, the decision makers (by necessity far closer to the end of privilege) continue to argue that global competition benefits the whole. The rest of us will find ourselves dotted at various points between, encouraged to endorse the actions of the most acquisitive through our own enforced means of achieving the best standards of living within our grasp. Living the capitalist dream! Or, perhaps, suffering the consequences of the capitalist nightmare? Who can honestly say?


Exactly, w3y

The aim of the grasping few will be to stretch the band, to increase the distance between themselves and the rest. The aim of the many should be to ease these extremes far closer together, to reduce the distance between ourselves and those who circumstance has permitted to wallow in accumulated wealth. The ever-fluctuating line that separates those who may currently eat well from those who may not is merely a consequence of the global market. But, in this decidedly finite world, the greater the divide the thinner the remaining wealth will be stretched. Consequence, increased global poverty, crocodile tears and far too much TV exposure for the acquisitive.

"So shoot me, I'm a rock star!" Too concise, Bono; too concise and selective by far! You are also a major factor in the cause of global poverty and starvation, and child exploitation (cheaper produce equates to greater profits for share holders). Cry those crocodile tears, Mr Bono, when you should next jet off to Africa, but, if you think you're more solution than cause then you're also horrendously deluded.

I'm not entirely certain that I'm comfortable with even the 'horrendously deluded' excuse. Me? I think you're entirely the hypocrite that you've been painted, Mr Bono.

So, where next for Red Nose Day? More of the same, I should imagine.

The Utopian Dream

It's strange, yet also more than a little exhilarating, to realise that virtually all of those things that one used to be able to so easily do, to perhaps take for granted, will often become beyond-attainable within the realm of one's dreams. 'Exhilarating,' in that one may temporarily escape one's ailing mortal coil; yet is it not perhaps also a mite wearisome in that, upon waking, one is so swiftly to be reacquainted with one's (or life's) stagnant limitations.

I often find, for example, ensconced within my own dreams, that I am once again able to fully participate in the recreational Godsend that is cricket, or to travel more freely to environs anew, whereby all manner of avifauna might inhabit the pristine forests, but never so furtively as to prevent a perfect observation of these selfsame creatures.

In my dreams life's insolubles tend towards the more amenable. Would that life were even remotely as yielding.

Now that I am, once again, fully awake, no longer bowling perfect inswingers to a series of technically perplexed batsmen, or busily acquainting myself with all manner of exotic-looking birdlife, I find that, awake, life is very much more of a give and take affair. An affair whereby the 'giving' is rather too frequently brought about as a result of an overzealous 'taking' on the part of others.

Thank you [Beta]

Is this really the wonderful free-market economy in which the wakeful I reside, within which I am expected to spend all of my non-sleeping hours, the 'perfect' dream of the enterprising capitalist? Perhaps we will revisit the term, 'enterprising,' again later in this blog; I feel it may be rather pertinent.

'My' ever-informative BBC informs me that I shall soon be required to participate in a tad more of that 'giving,' that another might yet again benefit through the act of 'taking.' My water, that created in order to sustain and support life, honed and perfected over eons by nature, has apparently further evolved; evolved an ability, no less, to differentiate. That such benign matter might have come to discriminate so, in favour of one over another, leaves me to ponder the pros and cons of the monetarist's dream, the entrepreneurial ideal, as set against the simpler and far-less-discriminatory world in which I might reside during the hours of my slumbers, my dreaming.

Water costs to rise by 3.5% over the next year, we have been informed. Regina Finn, operating on behalf of Ofwat- that's the lot charged with ensuring that all is well and good with the water market- pushed her little face up to the screen and smiled the smile of the eternal lie. Just to recap, Ofwat are the supposedly independent body who have been charged with ensuring that the water consumer is not to be exploited by the current anathema that is a water-providing business. A water-providing business, it's what God would have wanted! Anyway Regina, speaking up for those who may wish to partake of one of life's necessities, helped to clarify the situation.

And again, to [Beta]

What she said on the BBC- I scribed the short BBC interview verbatim- was, "They (Water Companies) cannot make unreasonable returns; they need to make fair returns because they need to be able to fund the huge investment that's needed to improve services for customers and we're making sure that happens at the best cost to the customers." Thank God that Regina has made the sacrifice of huge personal gain and chosen to speak up for the ordinary person; one can only imagine what she might have said if, instead of battling hard for the underdog, she were misdirecting criticism on behalf of the Water Companies that she's charged with keeping an eye upon.

So, to return to the concept of 'the enterprising capitalist,' that as required for the 'free'-market economy, such an economy that might reward a 'wise' investment, less so one more casually made. Cast aside, for the moment, any objections that might be levelled at such a system that chooses to reward the fortuitous guess, over honest hard work, and consider instead one that (supposedly) robustly endorses the art of gambling.

We would, of course, first need to level the field of play. Gambling could not possibly be seen to work upon a rigged surface. Site the Pakistani cricket team's recent disgrace, over the spot-fixing scandal. So, I would venture to suggest that the 'art' (it's not really an art, is it?) of buying shares in a company requires that, in a 'free'-market, shares might be seen to fall in value as well as to rise. Should losses never be incurred, then profits would also not be possible; that's just the way the Utopian Dream of the enterprising capitalist works. Forget, for the moment, that Thatcher effectively rigged the markets in order to dupe the general public into the free-for-all of shareholding, when all of the British utilities were sold off in the 1980s; she'd long recognised that within just a few years most of the shares would be 'safely' in the hands of her city friends. And so they were, and seem set to remain.

Thanks also, to cheltenhamborough

Thus, when all of those 'enterprising' would-be-Water-Company-shareholders decided to invest- and that's perhaps the key word here, 'invest'- they should really have been opting into playing an active role in the 'development' of the Water Companies, recognising that their money might be required to help to fund improvements and build towards greater profits. Whereas, what Regina Finn- 'our' guardian against exploitation on the part of these companies- seems to be saying is that spot-fixing in the 'free'-market is alive and kicking, thriving, raking it in, licensed-and-fully-endorsed-to exploit.

It's 'tough' in the business world! Free and 'honest' competition continues to 'contest,' in order to continue to deliver the best service to you, at the most reasonable and affordable of costs. And, one can only assume that operations within the Water Companies really must have been honed to virtual capitalist perfection, that during such times of necessary investment shareholding premiums should be expected to continue to deliver at 8%. And all in such times of manipulated austerity and fabricated annual drought. Who'd have thought it?

Thanks, on behalf of the oft-referenced tax-payer, who surely could not have contrived a better use for his or her money, to the 'honourable' Regina Finn. Thanks for striving, ever towards that Utopian Dream.