Labour Party leader and Aliens

So Red Ed is not dead after all, but very much alive and kicking, after he came from behind on Saturday to beat his brother David in the Labour Party leadership election by just 1.3%. David had more support from MPs and party activists, but Ed won through thanks mainly to the votes of union members.

One of his first tasks was to try and rubbish Tories’ claims that he was now in the unions’ pockets. However, they (the unions) will undoubtedly consider him as THEIR man, and will demand their pound of flesh somewhere down the line. He will discover that it’s rather difficult to appese them whilst trying to keep some of his MPs happy as well. He also informed the media yesterday that since his election on Saturday afternoon, folk have been joining the Labour ranks at the rate of one per minute. That’s 1,440 a day; 10,080 a week, or over one million new members within two years. Surely those new members, along with the existing party faithful, should be enough to see him safely into No 10 at the next election, as long as he remembers to bow the knee to the bigger unions as well, of course.

I see that trainee nurses are now to attend lectures on how to listen to patients, and show compassion towards them. Now, maybe I come from a bygone age, but I was led to believe that kindness and compassion towards their fellow beings was part and parcel of a nurse’s job. Indeed, we were told that it was more of a calling for them, and not so much of a job. The scheme has been added to the nursing student curriculum at Edinburgh’s Napier University following a £1 million, 3 year survey of patients, relatives, and nursing students sponsored by Ann Gloag, Stagecoach tycoon and former nurse. It seems ironic that the money was given by a woman who went to court, and successfully managed to get the public banned from part of her Kinfauns Castle estate in Perthshire. Is that the type of compassion that she had whilst a nurse, and is it the kind of attitude that she would like the student nurses to have?

Hundreds of bird watchers have flocked to Norfolk to catch a glimpse of a yellow-bellied flycatcher, which has been spotted for the first time in Europe. The 5 inch bird, which usually migrates to Mexico and Central America, is obviously no coward, as it has landed up to 4,000 miles off course. Maybe it just got fed up of going to the same bogs over there each year, and has heard that one can get around here fairly easily using Ryanair.

Talking of flights, and folk who are involved in such, it is being reported that the UN is to appoint a space ambassador to act as the first point of contact with any aliens who want to make contact with us after landing on our planet. They are set to give the job to Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist, who is currently head of the little known Office for Outer Space Affairs. Presumably, they will be intellectually more advanced than us, and to save room in their craft, they will probably be sent by their leaders as individual sort of flatpacks, to be assembled on touching down here. I would imagine that their first words might be, “ Greetings, Madame Othman, we come in pieces”.

Police, Nurses, and Red Tape

Those overpaid guys and gals in Westminster, who masquerade as the UK Government, seem to really have lost their marbles this week. They will announce today that all new nurses will need to be educated to degree level in an attempt to improve the quality of patient care. The move, which will be enforced from 2013, is designed to raise the status of nursing and to end the stigma of the “doctor’s helper” Actually, as far as I can see, the nurses have been carrying out a few of the doctors’ duties for some considerable time now. It seems that anyone who wishes to become a nurse will need to have a degree within four years, in one of the biggest shake-ups of medical education in the history of the NHS. There are more than 400,000 nurses in the NHS, making up the largest part of the country’s health workforce. At the moment, the minimum level for NHS trainee nursing positions is a diploma — a two or three-year nursing course.

If this new recommendation is implemented, with all nurses required to obtain a degree, I would think that the standard of proper nursing would actually decline, instead of showing an improvement. A lot of folk who would make excellent nurses because of their temperament and caring attitude will look for other types of work if they feel that they cannot cope with studying for degree exams, or that their brain power is simply not geared up for it. Some will also be put off by the prospect of a long and expensive period of study. For those who are not suited to the nursing profession, but who would study for, and receive the degree, we could be facing a scenario where some of them would feel themselves to be above carrying out mundane tasks, and to be “too clever to care”, refusing to carry out duties such as washing and feeding patients and helping them to the lavatory etc.

In a somewhat similar situation, I’ve managed to help quite a few folk over the years in learning a new language, but I am not allowed to teach it in schools, simply because I don’t have a degree. Do all those who have gained degrees make excellent, or even good, teachers? I think not. There are thousands of teachers in our schools who are simply not suited to the job. They are brainy enough, sometimes brilliant, in fact, but they cannot impart their knowledge to others. We could, and indeed will have, the same kind of situation in our hospitals and health centres. I reckon the old saying is still true – that nurses are born, not made.

Now to something which concerns our policemen, and which is definitely more bizarre. The official Police Cycle Training Doctrine is soon to be published – pamphlets in 2 volumes, containing 93 pages -- the cost of which is estimated at thousands of pounds. It will include such nuggets of information as how to balance on a bike so they don’t fall off, how to stop and get off it safely, how to brake and avoid obstacles such as rocks and kerbs. It even advises bobbies not to tackle suspects while they are “still engaged with the cycle”. I feel a sitcom is definitely in order – I’ll even supply the signature tune for free:- “Ride we gaily, on we go; Plod on bike, with thief in tow.”

Back to the Health Service for an example of some of the stupid rules that have crept into everyday life in Britain. Visitors to the Calderdale Royal Hospital in Halifax were asked not to coo at, stare at, or ask too many questions of newborn babies in the maternity ward – on the grounds that—wait for this – it could infringe the babies’ right to privacy! What on earth was I going to ask a one day old child – his bank details? In the meantime, the Children’s Index is a data base which brings together all sorts of information on our nation’s children, and which is available to 400,000 doctors, social workers, and other officers of the state. It follows that you are not allowed to coo at babies for fear of invading their privacy, but it’s fine for the Government to give out details of a child’s health and education records to 400,000 public sector staff. Writing this has so infuriated me that I’m away to phone Gordon Brown to see if it’s okay to have my dose of Diazepam (Valium) earlier than usual.