The Salisbury Pages

Quotes of the Day

2005-02-15T16:41:00.000Z

"It's a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice-cream and a quart of dog faeces and mix 'em together the result will taste more like the latter than the former."

Mark Steyn

"You do not have to be a fundamentalist to admit that it is unlikely that the Holy Spirit supports guiding the Church into denying His existence."

Prudence Dailey, of the Oxford diocese

The Big Match

2004-10-18T18:31:00.000+01:00

Not really being a sports fan I never really 'get' the exitement of world cups, Europeans cups, qualifying matches and the like. I certainly don't choose to watch sport on TV. If I ever do I'll probably start with women's beach volleyball and ladies gymnastics, though the former is arguably closer to soft porn than real sport.

The closest I ever get to understanding what excites sports fans is at political election time. We are told the coming US elections could be the most significant in living memory, and Bush and Kerry are virtually neck and neck. There's all to play for and everything to loose. I'm unashamedly a Bush man, I intistinctivly warm to a man who reduces liberals to such incoherent, incredulous apoplexy. I'll certainly be staying up to watch the results on election night.

I've discovered this US election poll tracker on the BBC, which I'll use to keep track of the latest poll information. I'm no supporter of the BBC either, but they are good at charts, and elections aren't elections without Peter Snow jumping up and down like a four year old needing the toilet.

Charlotte Wyatt; A rotten precedent

2004-10-15T03:35:00.000+01:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about the case of Charlotte Wyatt and now Luke Winston-Jones over the last few days, and the implications of the case are still being talked about at work.

One of the things that has struck me about the case is the considerable consensus across the political and religious spectrum that it is, firstly, a tragedy and, secondly, that everybody involved in the case is motivated to do what is best for Charlotte. Laban Tall, here and here, seems to be a lone voice of outrage, while spokespeople such Josephine Quintavalle of Comment on Reproductive Ethics and the Pro Life Alliance, and Peter Smith , RC Archbishop of Cardiff, seem to have considerable sympathy for the position of the doctors, even if they fall short of endorsing the judge's decision.

Yet I’m moving towards agreeing with Laban. I’m not as ready as him to question the Christian credentials of Mr Justice Hedley. I’m a pro life, evangelical Christian too and taken in isolation I suspect that his decision is, at least on the balance of probabilities, best for Charlotte, even if it isn’t for her parents. He’s certainly not advocating her termination. The law demands he act in her interest not theirs. Certainly the duty of care owed by hospitals is owed to patients first, and only then to their relatives (although in cases such as this it’s a very close second). This looks a pretty bald statement at first glance, but the needs of parents and patients aren't always the same, and parent, even loving parents, don't always act in the best interests of their children. I think a more than plausible case can be made that quality of life is at least as important as length of life.

I wouldn’t even blame the mess on the NHS. I’m no supporter of our Stalinist healthcare system, but ethical dilemmas such as this this arise under any system, even privatised and mixed ones. Aggressive treatment can cause profound suffering to patients. I’ve carried such treatment out while nursing on adult Intensive Care Units. Aggressive treatment may be worthwhile if it does result is the survival of the patient, but it’s surely less justified if it doesn’t. Providing treatment which leads to patient suffering inevitably has a profound effect on those carrying out that treatment, especially when it becomes apparent the patient will die anyway. Laban might be right on the biased nuances of the word ‘aggressive’, but in this context the opposite of ‘aggressive’ is ‘conservative’ and unfortunately that’s a word with negative connotations too.

So why am I moving towards agreeing with Laban?

That this case came to court at all implies a breakdown in trust between medical and nursing staff and Debbie and Darren Wyatt. Doctors are called on to be calm and professional, and it is they who should bear most responsibility when there is a breakdown of trust. That breakdown might be the caused by a number of factors, but it’s pretty unsatisfactory for everybody if it results in increasing legal involvement in the withdrawal of treatment. Whether Mr Justice Hedley wants it or not, this case does set a legal precedent and doctors will be tempted to resort to the courts more speedily than they did before, especially when dealing with ‘difficult’ families. Evidence over the last thirty years shows that when doctors relinquish a moral high ground, they never retake it. The case of the now widespread availability of abortion and the permitted starving to death of patients resulting from the Tony Bland case being cases in point. A horrifying number of my nursing colleagues agree with euthanasia, and are amazed at my opposition to it. We slide further and further from what is right and we seem unable to return.

In addition there seems to be an increasing suspicion that the NHS routinely withdraws lifesaving treatment for purely economic or ideological reasons. It’s not really a fear I share. I’ve witnessed more examples of patients being given excessively agressive treatment rather than insufficient, but it’s the former that makes the news and resonates with the public. Mostly, I think, because people feel quite powerless over the health service, certainly more powerless than they do over any other commodity they purchase. In the long run we may remember this case as one more brick in the wall of mistrust, though it's worth remembering that there is considerably more distrust between doctors and relatives within the private American system than the NHS.

Another factor is the difference between adult patients dying and children dying. Most patients dying on an adult Intensive Care Unit are elderly, though by no means all. The degree to which a family accepts the death of a loved one is generally proportional to their age. You can accept your eighty three year old mother dying a lot more easily than your twenty four year old husband. Nature has endowed parents with a passionate desire to protect their children, especially when they are very vulnerable, and put their interests first. This sometimes breaks down, but unless there is evidence that it has in this case, it should require more than the balance of probabilities that the doctors know what's best for Charlotte, rather than her parents. This, I think, is the crux of Laban's argument.

This decision may or may not have been best for Charlotte. There‘s a certain irony if it was, because she may have been the only person who does benefit from it. Her parents didn‘t, and neither, in the long run, did the doctors, nor did the population at large. Even the judges may come to regret it. I suspect the judge made the only decision he could, but this case will be used to justify less justifiable cases in the future and that it was made at all sets a pretty rotten precedent.

Bloody EU

2004-09-22T14:17:00.000+01:00

I notice Tim of An Englishman's Castle comments today on news that the EU Working Time Directive is to be tightened up, making it harder for countries to opt out of the 48 hour working week.

God these people make me angry. What moral right do they have to put themselves above our, or any, national government (even if it is led by Tony Blair). By what arrogance do they think they know better than any work force what is best for them. Through what cowardice do national governments cave in and allow these unelected parasites to boss them about. It really is time to pull out of the EU and leave them to their own devices.

Bastards

Good Luck with the blogging, Boris

2004-09-22T10:14:00.000+01:00

Having been a little beastly to poor Boris Johnson earlier in the week, I notice he's started his own blog, largely on the recommendation of a chap called Tim. Best of Luck there Boris.

I know he's going to end up making me laugh and I hate myself for it already.

Loaded for Bear

2004-09-19T16:35:00.000+01:00

"In Britain last week, MPs voted to ban hunting with dogs, depriving people of the chance to chase foxes armed with nothing more lethal than a pack of hounds. In America, the 1994 ban on military-style assault rifles passed by Bill Clinton has now expired after President George W Bush failed to extend it. Now, all you need if you want to take a walk in the woods equipped like Rambo is about $1,000. In America, it's known as being 'loaded for bear'“ today's Sunday Telegraph

Now that’s what I call fieldsports!

Life in the Nash

2004-09-18T01:39:00.000+01:00

I’m a lucky man. I’ve a job I adore, and not many people can say that. Theatre nursing is technically challenging, but free from much of the emotional stress of nursing on the wards. The hours are congenial in comparison, and the wages sufficient to pay my mortgage. Sooner or later all the world makes it’s way through hospital, and I get to have interesting conversations with many of them as they do so.

One of the things I like most about working for the Nash is that it’s such an international organisation. As I get older I find it harder and harder to enjoy travelling abroad. Give me a weekend in Criccieth any day. The beds are never comfortable, and I get fretful when I can’t make myself understood. I find myself metamorphosing into some kind of sub standard Victor Meldrew, without the wit. I remain passionately interested in world events though, and working for the Nash gives me the opportunity to discuss them with people from the places concerned.

Occasionally spoken English is a problem, but that’s the West Midlands for you. The Filipinos usually understand what is being said sooner or later. A few years ago I worked in Cheltenham, hardly the most multi-cultural town in England. Even there, I counted nine languages spoken by two or more people in the theatre department alone, including Zulu and Afrikaans. I’d guess there are many more where I work now. At the very least it means we never have to get a translator in from outside. Besides, you can’t believe in free trade and not believe in at least some degree of freedom of movement, at least for those with marketable professional qualifications. Still the consequences are interesting sometimes.

I got talking to an Asian anaesthetist from Bradford yesterday. He’s got a face like Uday Hussein, an accent like Geoff Boycott and a wicked sense of humour that’s all Yorkshire. Apparently a couple of days earlier he had been waking up a patient after an anaesthetic when the patient had become more and more agitated. Eventually the patient was awake enough to croak, “Where am I?”

“You’re in Brummagen General Hospital” my colleague replies.

“Thank God for that!” says the patient, with transparent relief, “I thought I’d been kidnapped.”

Looking around the bed my colleague realizes that there’s not a white doctor or nurse among them. “Mind you,” he tells me with a wicked glint in his eye, “I’d still like to have seen his face if I’d said, ”You’re in the Tora Bora mountains, mate.”"

Is There More to Boris Than Meets the Eye?

2004-09-16T17:37:00.000+01:00

Last night’s post on hospital cleaning and MRSA seems to have been accidentally topical, and Boris Johnson comments on Blair’s curious priorities in today’s telegraph.

I’ve got mixed feelings about Boris’ style of writing. On one hand I’m amused by his blend of semi coherent outrage and general bonhomie, on the other I’m not convinced that the genial buffoon he pretends to be would have succeeded in becoming a magazine editor, MP for one of the safest Conservative seats in the country and a shadow minister (even in this Conservative front bench) Nor am I much convinced that the forces of British Conservatism are helped by maintaining an image of Conservatives as bumbling, public school dilettantes. I think there’s more to Boris than meets the eye but I’m still waiting to see if he shows us what it is.

Where did the Smell of Disinfectant go? (Part II)

2004-09-16T01:31:00.000+01:00

Operating theatres are full of identically dressed people who don’t wear name badges, forcing staff to guess whether the new colleague they are standing next to is a surgeon, anaesthetist, nurse, operating department practitioner, auxiliary, orderly or cleaner. Chatting to a new colleague today, I find she is a former cleaner who has just become a theatre auxiliary; an unqualified assistant who is able to fetch equipment, instruments and sterile supplies for the nurses and ODPs assisting the surgeon.

My new colleague and I got talking about hospital cleanliness and I shared some observations I had made as a ward nurse about how little time cleaners spend cleaning wards, resulting sometimes in truly filth conditions. Her replies were more than a little worrying and I share them with you now.

According to my colleague cleaners have on average about an hour a day to clean a busy 32 bedded ward. They will cover several wards and as well as cleaning floors and surfaces they wash up the kitchen, hand out and collect meals and do tea rounds for the patients. Feeding patients has historically been a nursing job, for the very good reason that inadequate food and liquid intake leads to malnutrition and dehydration; malnutrition being a growing problem in hospitals, or more accurately NHS hospitals. (I’d bet you money that problem started when nurses stopped taking responsibility for mealtimes, but that’s another story.)

Sadly it’s true, as I was once told, that cleaners aren’t allowed to clean up body fluids, specifically urine, faeces, vomit and blood. Possibly a reasonable proscription if you’re a cleaner in an aeroplane factory, it’s surely foolishness in a hospital where such fluids are the reality of daily life. In practice it becomes the responsibility of nursing staff to clean up the mess. Of course the nurse’s immediate responsibility is to the unfortunate patient whose clothes and bedding need changing, or who needs comforting, or who is haemorrhaging. If the floor needs cleaning it’s going to get done after the patient’s needs are met, and it’s probably going to get done in a cursory way, because by now the nurse will be behind in the other tasks she needs to be doing.

The cleaner’s one hour clean needs to be seen in this context. Moreover, as my colleague points out, that one hour clean invariably coincides with the doctors ward round, or patients being collected for theatre or whatever. Training is apparently derisory, with poorly motivated cleaners being inadequately trained by equally dispirited supervisors.

My colleague isn’t impressed by hygiene in the operating theatre either. Cleaners don’t clean equipment, only floors and fabric (presumably on the ground that the equipment is expensive and cleaners might break it). The result is that the equipment barely gets cleaned at all, and when it does it is in a haphazard and intermittent way. Perhaps what is most frightening is that we are a good hospital, well regarded, and one in which, by and large, I’d be happy to be an inpatient myself. Goodness alone knows what it’s like in the bad ones.

What can be done? I don’t see an alternative outside a significant increase in the priority given to hospital cleaning and to cleaners. There is some evidence that my hospital is beginning to see this (it came out quite badly in recent MRSA figures). Well trained, motivated cleaners are as vital to patient recovery as doctors and nurses (Certainly bad cleaners are as deleterious to patients recovery as bad doctors and nurses) Wards should have their own cleaners and they should not get sidelined into jobs more properly done by nurses. They should be trained and expected to clean up body fluids, and should be on hand to do so. They should also be trained to clean equipment and if they have to be paid more to attract appropriately intelligent staff they should. Short-termism has long been the bane of the NHS but MRSA infection rates, among many other things, show what a poor long term investment this has been. The irony is that in many cases the solution to hospital aquired infections will be a return to practice which was considered normal forty years ago.

A Bishop Speaks Out

2004-08-13T00:01:00.000+01:00

If Stephen Lowe, the Bishop of Hulme , writing in his diocesan news letter, sees a moral equivalence between nazi Germany in the thirties and today’s Britain he’s clearly got some difficulty with perspective. It’s the same lack of perspective which saw traditional icons such as the flag being condemned as symbols of racism. As a result the flag became the exclusive property of undemocratic racists. It’s good to see the flag now being reclaimed by democrats of all races within Britain, and it just seems silly to go through all this again with I Vow to Thee my Country. Symbols of nationhood play an important part in binding a people together and it doesn't make society a stronger and healthier place when they are undermined frivolously.

But it's a little more complicated than that. One of my favourite songs is Jerusalem. It’s stirring, benignly patriotic, avoids naked jingoism and calls on the singers to build a better country here in England. It’s a song which resonates with both the political left and the right, and as a song specifically about England makes an excellent ‘English’, rather than ‘British‘, national anthem. (The Scots and Welsh have theirs and there is nothing wrong with us having ours) Yet it’s not really a hymn. It’s theology is highly questionable and it’s not about the Christian God in any orthodox sense. Sung in a stadium it brings tears to my eyes. Sung in church it makes me squirm.

With some reluctance I think Bishop Lowe makes one good point. Modern Britain may be nothing like Nazi Germany, but a church existed in Germany when the Nazis came to power. All to often that church acquiesced with the Nazi state. Even Christians who went on to oppose Hitler with some heroism were compromised before hand, because they had been conditioned to support the state unquestioningly. Bishop Lowe is right to remind patriotic, right of centre, Christians (of whom I’m unashamedly one) that they aren't called to put country before God, although in fairness he should also have pointed out that they are called to give the state the things due to it, which certainly include a high degree of personal loyalty. I’m not convinced that I Vow to Thee my Country does call us to put country before God, just before "all earthly things", but he’s probably right to remind us of the dangers of unquestioning nationalism. He’s just wrong to condemn nationalism unquestioningly.

Australian Breast Cancer and Immigration

2004-08-11T22:49:00.000+01:00

I haven’t blogged for the last few days as I have been finishing off the last assignment of a course. I have also been preparing for a job interview, as a result of which I am now a charge nurse (which is what they call a male sister). I’ve been qualified for eighteen years, so nobody can accuse me of being cursed with an over abundance of ambition.

I had supper with some friends tonight to celebrate. One of these is a fellow nurse, who is off to Oz soon to work for a year at Melbourne Children’s Hospital. As part of her visa requirements she has had to undergo a two hour medical, in which every part of her anatomy has been palpated and every orifice intimately probed. Apparently this is required because the Australian success rate in the treatment of breast cancer (among many other diseases) is now so much better then ours that people with recently diagnosed breast cancer are trying to move to Oz for the better treatment.

I’m deeply saddened that the quality of treatment for breast cancer in this country is falling behind other countries. Personally I blame an NHS philosophy which puts more emphasis on equality of access to health care, however poor that care is, than seeking to raise standards across the board, even if the result is some degree of inequality. I believe that once you stop putting quality top of your list of priorities you're lost. Anyway, as they say, a rising tide raises all boats.

But I’m more struck by the robustness of Australian immigration policy. So clear are they that it’s wrong for Australian taxpayers to be taken advantage of, for taxpayers money to be spent treating people who haven’t contributed to their own care, and who are in the country primarily to take advantage of the health care system, that they make real and vigorous attempts to prevent this happning. I’d like to know if we do the same. Does anyone know?

A Question of Choice?

2004-08-06T14:45:00.001+01:00

David Carr, of Samizdata, is on the radio tonight refuting the idea that the state has the right to micro manage every aspect of our lives. (Taking the Fight to the Enemy)

To my mild embarrassment I’m a qualified health promotion officer, although I haven’t practiced for nearly ten years. In my defence I was very, very bad at it. In the end I resigned, in preference to being fired, driven to distraction by the complete absence of any way to measure whether anything I was doing was making any difference to anybody. Such was my stress at the time that I was (secretly) smoking 25 cigarettes a day, coughing up brown phlegm, living off take aways and only exercising when I got up to change channels on the TV. The irony of all this seems delicious in retrospect, but at the time it rather undermined any remaining belief I had that I should be lecturing people on how to live their lives.

It was probably working in health promotion that tipped me from being a ‘modern’ liberal to the old fashioned, small government sort. I remember the missionary zeal of the head of a national anti smoking organisation whom I once met. There was nothing she wouldn’t have done to stop people smoking, fair or foul. I also remember a job I nearly applied for. The job involved the implementation on an NHS trust’s new anti smoking policy, imposing a blanket ban on smoking on their property. The stated rationale for this was that it would "protect people from the effects of passive and active smoking".

Now I know what protecting people from the effects of passive smoking means, and by and large I‘m in favour of it, provided it can be balanced against the rights of others to smoke if they want. But what does protecting people from active smoking mean? It means they think that they know better than you what’s good for you, and they are going to stop you doing it for your own good.

And surely that’s not liberal by anyone’s definition.

Reinvigorating British Democracy

2004-08-03T17:16:00.000+01:00

As we observe the declining proportion of the population that bothers to vote in elections, & the seeming disengagement of many people from the political process, I wonder whether the time has come to emulate the American & especially Swiss way of making democracy relevant to their electorates.

It seems to me, that people are apathetic & even contemptuous of the political process, not because they think politics is irrelevant, but because they cannot see how their vote will actually change anything.

In my view, the basic flaw of our 'representative democracy', is that it only represents the views of a very narrow segment of society, ie the chattering classes. The great mass of people are largely disenfranchised, & have therefore given up on politics.

I think the Americans & especially the Swiss have got a much better idea of doing things. There the frequent use of referenda to decide major & minor issues makes the political process unmistakeably relevant to people. The response that we don't have a tradition of referenda, is both inadequate, & increasingly out dated, as Mr Blair has now reluctantly conceded one over the European Constitution.

Also the idea of a system where the masses vote once every few years to elect their leaders, & then look on helplessly as those leaders make law (and enter into international treaties) without any reference to them, is thoroughly out moded. Surely it was designed for a society where only a small minority of the population had an education. This is no longer the case in the UK, and its time for the political class to open up the 'closed shop' of the political process to the people.

I wonder how many of the laws & treaties of the past few decades would have been passed if they had been subject to a referendum? The abolition of capital punishment?

Also, as I understand it in the USA, a citizen can get a motion on the ballot if he gets say 350 000 signatures on a petition. What a splendid way of connecting the people to their democracy!

Lastly, I think if we Tories were to offer this constitutional change to the people at the next election (Labour has changed it so much already anyway), it would reap great dividends, & outflank Labour completely.

Not much Sanity here.

2004-08-03T14:45:00.000+01:00

The Telegraph reports the suspension of the leadership of the Falmouth & Cambourne Conservatist Association for the temerity to endorse a video called "Shockwaves" claiming to reveal 'the facts they don't want you to know about the EU'. It's produced by the amusingly named Sanity (Subjects against the Nice Treaty), set up by Ashley Mote, since elected (and suspended) as a UKIP MEP.

While it's understandable that the Tories should be cagy about links to other parties, particularly parties with whom they are competing directly at the hustings, the fact is that for many in the party UKIPs position on Europe seems more attractive than the Tory's own. While for those on the left, the Conservative position is always be too extreme. The Conservatives are in danger of being trapped and outflanked on either side.

If the Conservative leadership wants to avoid the impression that it too is part of the pro EU juggernaut, rolling inexorably towards Euro integration, regardless of the democratic wishes of the British people, it should commit itself to a binding referendum on each and every European treaty, and opposition to each piece of Eurolegislation which doesn't have the support of the British people. It should support the principles of popular democracy and government by consent. It certainly shouldn't gag constituency associations which are more in tune with popular feeling than it's own Central Office.

Damn Computers!!

2004-07-30T11:06:00.000+01:00

For the last couple of days my computer has been misbehaving, (apparantly I have a 'dialer'), and I have had to blog from the library at work. Time for this is limited so no other blogs today. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible...

A Bad Week to Start Blogging

2004-07-29T11:55:00.000+01:00

I've chosen a bad week to start blogging because I have the final assignment for a diploma due in this week. I could have written three assignments in the time spent setting this site up and posting views, although I've enjoyed doing both. I was going to post a view on capital punishment following the murdered schoolboy incident at the weekend, but Peter Cuthbertson has raised the same issue and most of what I would have commented on here I have said there. I'll try and come back to the issue later. There's not much to add to what Peter said other than to point out that the minimum sentence of thirteen years awarded to Shahajan Kabir yesterday, for murdering his infant son Hassan, represents less than his son's childhood, let alone his life.

My assignment is on the treatment of HM prisoners in NHS hospitals, particularly in relation to the operating theatre where I work. As such I visited my local catagory C nick to talk to nurses there, fortunately in more favourable circumstances than Richard North. Prisoners are now treated by NHS staff, whether inside prison or out; until recently when in prison they were treated by Prison Officers with variable amounts of nursing experience. The new system isn't national yet, and there are still many, many problems. I will be commenting on these shortly. However, it remains my conviction that treating prisoners humanely is not incompatible with proportionate justice for murder.

Re-evaluating the First World War

2004-07-28T17:40:00.000+01:00

Today’s Metro (A freebie newspaper for those travelling by public transport) recommends this website on the First World War. I’ve not had a chance to fully explore it yet, but it looks both interesting and comprehensive.

I’d always found the first world war a lot more inaccessible than the second, until I read Gordon Corrigan’s Mud, Blood and Poppy Cock last year. Corrigan is a former major in the Royal Ghurkha Rifles, and his is not a book which clouds itself in cold academic objectivity. It’s a passionate denunciation of the distortion of history that the First World War became, accompanied by an old soldier’s dryly witty asides, especially about the perfidy and vanity of politicians. A subject all to topical in the light of this governments attitude to defence commitments and cutbacks.

Corrigan deconstructs, one by one, the myths that have arisen about the war. As he says,

The popular British view of the Great War is of a useless slaughter of hundreds of thousands of patriotic volunteers, flung against barbed wire and machine guns by stupid generals who never went near the font line. When these young men could do no more, they were hauled before kangaroo courts, given no opportunity to defend themselves, and then taken out and shot at dawn. The facts are that over 200 British generals were killed, wounded or captured in the war, and of the five million men who passed through the British Army, 2300 were sentenced to death by military courts, of whom ninety percent were pardoned.

In fact just 346 men were shot, representing 1 in 14,500 soldiers. Many of those shot were either officers or senior NCOs, or had previously been pardoned for the same offence.

Corrigan says of Haig,

Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, far from being the ‘butcher and bungler’ of popular belief, was the man who took a tiny British army, and expanded it, trained it and prepared it until it was the only Allied army capable of defeating the Germans militarily in 1918.

I last saw my late uncle nine months ago (he died in June) and we discussed the book quite thoroughly. Himself a servant of the crown for 26 years, he told me that his father in law wouldn’t hear a word said against Haig until the end of his life. The most evocative book I have read on the subject since was Forgotten Voices, edited by Max Arthur, a compilation of the memories of old soldiers, recorded in the 1970s, many of whom held views similar to my uncle’s father-in-law.

War is inevitably a product of the failure of politicians. Given the current state of the world, I think it’s right that this period of our history should be re-evaluated by historians.

The Queen speaks again

2004-07-27T19:34:00.000+01:00

Interesting article in the Times http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1192536,00.html on the possibility of science being able to retrieve the voice recordings on the very oldest phonographic cylinders and 78s. Apparently we are soon to hear the voices of eminent Victorians once again, including Alfred Tennyson, Florence Nightingale and even the Queen herself. (No suggestion unfortunately that the great Lord Salisbury might be among them)

Parliamentary "bedblockers"

2004-07-26T22:05:00.000+01:00

An interesting article By George Trefgarne and Jonathan Isaby in the Telegraph today, on plans to quietly encourage around thirty under performing Tory MPs to announce their retirement as soon as possible, allowing plenty of time for new parliamentary candidates to be selected before to the general election. The new term for these Billy Bunteresque characters is “Parliamentary bed blockers”. As a nurse I find the analogy all too appropriate.

Another analogy springs to mind as well. One of the most depressing things about today’s Tory Party, or at least the parliamentary party, is it’s faint air of embarrassment. Professionally I encounter potentially embarrassing situations every day. My first job, as a smooth cheeked, eighteen year old was to give pubic shaves to men old enough to be my grandfather. (These days we allow patients to shave themselves, or they are shaved under anaesthetic before the operation starts. Who says the NHS isn't concerned about patient dignity). I learnt very quickly that nothing was more likely to lead to their embarrassment than my own, and I quickly developed a form of manly banter to ease the tricky social situation, much of it involving football and motor bikes, subjects which I know no more about now than I did then.

While the link between shaving others peoples genitals and the current state of the Conservative Party is not obvious, it does lie here; If they are bashful and apologetic what confidence can we have in them. We are told there is a new generation of young Tories, hungry for power, waiting their opportunity their turn to enter the arena. Open the cage doors I say.

Where did the smell of disinfectant go?

2004-07-26T00:49:00.000+01:00

There seems to be a growing fear among the British population that MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus) is reaching epidemic proportions. The subject is covered in an article entitled Private Hospitals Don’t Get MRSA by James Bartholemew in today’s Sunday Telegraph. (Sorry I can’t do links yet.) In particular he states:

The danger of getting MRSA is, above all, a risk affecting patients of the NHS. Officially the number of people infected by MRSA in the bloodstream - the dangerous place to get it - is about 7,600 a year. But this is a minimum. It is possible for someone to die of MRSA without a post-mortem test to discover whether it was the cause of death. Even if we take this minimum, though, how does it compare with the private sector?

BMI Healthcare is one of the biggest private hospital groups in the UK, with 47 hospitals. During the course of a year, the group has a quarter of a million in-patients and three-quarters of a million out-patient visits. How many patients in BMI hospitals have acquired MRSA in the blood? None. In fact, over the years, the company has "never" had such a case.

My own view is that the problem has several causes. They include a government which is more than happy to point the blame at the personal hygiene of doctors and nurses and a nursing profession which is institutionally programmed to see itself as the passive victim of governmental parsimony. These problems are compounded by a management system which long ago forgot the distinction between management and leadership. None of them seem to be asking “Why the NHS?”

When I started nursing in 1982 hospitals had a distinctive smell of disinfectant. Where did it go?

I hate computers.

2004-07-25T15:42:00.000+01:00

I really, really, really hate computers. There's just so much about them that I don't understand. Every computer course I've ever done has either treated me like an idiot, (This is the screen, this is the keyboard etc) or assumed a vast level of knowledge that I just don't have. It's probably not computers I hate, just the feeling very, very stupid. Working for the NHS I can apply to study for the European Driving Licence in Computing (or some such nonsense), which apparently any NHS employee can ask to study regardless of whether they are a director or a cleaner. Who says the NHS wastes money. I'm instinctively skeptical of anything with the word European in the title, but it might be time to swallow my pride and give it a go. Meanwhile does anybody have any idea how to download my picture into my profile, or how to set up a list of favorite links?

EU Referendum

2004-07-24T18:56:00.000+01:00

I'm still playing around with the site, learning what I can do and what I can't. I did think this http://www.eureferendum.blogspot.com/ was quite interseting though.

Why this site is called the Salisbury Pages

2004-07-24T17:11:00.000+01:00

Lord Salisbury was British Prime Minister at the end of the 19th century, the golden age of laissez faire government. He was quoted as saying (something like) "Governments should do nothing, for when ever they do anything they invariably get it wrong". It was rare wisdom from a statesman and todays politicians would do well to learn from it!

My first day as a blogger

2004-07-24T17:05:00.000+01:00

I've just spent most of this afternoon trying to set up this blog site. It's quite a learning curve bacause I'm not as computer literate as I'd like. Still conservatism is as much about moving with the times as holding onto the past.

Today I entered my profile (which will probably get changed), failed to download a photo of myself and swore a lot. Tomorrow I hope will be better.

2004-07-24T15:40:00.000+01:00

I'm not normally this smart