a view through my own eyes

Yes really three postings about NHS appointments in the same day – it is how things happened honest.

Once I return home from the hospital, I go through the post.

Amongst them is a “REMINDER LETTER” (they really do not need to shout) for an appointment with Mr DeCock on the 4th January. The letter is dated the 22nd of December.

I find this mildly amusing as I have never had an appointment booked to see him on that date.

The following day I do the decent thing and phone up to get it cancelled, initially I ring the wrong number – there are two on the letter, one for choose and book patients and one for the appointment hotline. I rang the choose and book option by mistake – it didn’t take long as British Telecom advised me that the number is no longer valid – brilliant. So I ring the hotline number and cancel the appointment explaining that I saw Mr DeCock the day before (apparently I didn’t have an appointment for yesterday – which is odd since I did and had a booking letter for it and a reminder letter for it).

So whilst on one hand this reminder system can be handy, how many people are being mucked about being hauled in for appointments that they may not actually have or need? Who is checking this and ensuring it works? Me cancelling that appointment is going to be marked down as a cancellation, no one is going to look to see where the cock up occurred – human error or IT error. No one actually cares enough to check, find out and ensure that it will not happen again.

Let me say it again: Government, NHS, IT, success, financial savings

Sigh.

Returned to see the eye consultant today.

Did the usual “what can you see through the pin hole” with the nurse and then sat and waited.

Good job I took a book with me really (Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd – thanks mrspao) as I had to wait a while. I have no objections to appointments running late as I know that some will take longer that the NHS allotted 10 minutes and I would rather that the consultant and his colleagues did a good thorough job than a rushed botched one. Talking to the receptionist though it seems that my attitude is somewhat scarce – apparently she usually gets loads of complaints about things running late and how inefficient things are and they should be better yadda yadda yadda.

Eventually I get hauled in to see the consultants colleague, he takes a good look round my eye with the slit lamp and tells me that things are going well. He also mentions that its rather busy today and I will have to wait to see Mr DeCock, at which point the phone rings. He calls through the door “its for you” and Mr DeCock comes in and takes the call.

Then he sees me sat in the chair and comments “since you are sat there I may as well look now”, takes a good look through the slit lamp and announces to his colleague “pull the one out just to the left of six o’clock”. Then to me “antibiotic drops three times a day for a week, maxidex twice a day until you see me in two months time and before you come in go to the optician get them to do a full eye test and bring the refraction results in, they have time to do a full eye test and we are as you can see somewhat busy. The eye is looking really good, have a Happy New Year”. Then he runs off to his other patient next door.

Five minutes later the stitch is pulled and I have a slip and I have an appointment booking form to hand in.

At the reception desk the lottery box is out (you stick the form in and see what you get a few weeks later), handily the receptionist is still there and takes the form from me even though there are a heap in the box. Taps away on the computer and says “two months time, nearest thursday – first of March. Hows that?” That is absolutely fine I assure her.

Why can’t getting an appointment be always that easy?

I wonder if a reminder will turn up sometime in mid February.

I have been having trouble with my hearing aids, well one of them anyway. The sound keeps cutting out and to be honest its either the aid or something in my head (no sarky remarks please) – checking the aid is easy – besides it needs some adjustment anyway, so whilst at the hospital anyway I wandered into audiology on the off chance that I could wangle an appointment.

Five minutes later after I have explained the problem to the nice receptionist (they have two) and mentioned that I have have been seeing Dave (the manager) about the issues, I have an appointment for a week later.

I know full well from past experience if I get the not so helpfull receptionist or try and make an appointment through my GP or the appointments hotline (sic) then I would have to wait around eight weeks.

Excellent.

Stained Window at St Mildreds Church in Canterbury, originally uploaded by paosborneuk.

mrspao and I wandered into town today to finish off the shopping.

Here’s a hint: go in early because it starts getting busy around eleven o’clock.

Anyway on the trip home we popped into St Mildreds to take a look at the Christmas tree display, which was not exactly exciting, however I was rather taken by the window at the end of the nave.

Earlier in the year (on our wedding anniversary) I had the pleasure of going to the Design Museum in London (mrspao went to on a knitting day) which is not a place that I would normally frequent.

On display were a selection of F1 cars over the last 50 years, including a Cooper T51 as driven by Stirling Moss and Jack Brabham, a Brabham BT20 driven by Jack and Denny Hulme, a Team Lotus Type 75 driven by Mario Andretti and Ronnie Peterson, a McLaren-Honda MP4/4 driven by Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna, a William FW14B driven by Ricardo Patrese and Nigel Mansel, Ferrari F2004 driven by Ruben Barrichello and Michael Shumacher, finally the Renault R25 driven by Giancarlo Fiscichella and Fernando Alonso.

Sadly the exhibition was in darkened rooms with a couple of spotlights on each car and most of the photos came out trully terrible (before I owned the Canon and had a understanding of what the settings meant – though a well filed manual didn’t help). However the Renault was really well lit and heres a couple of pictures:

Running a bit late on entries so back dating.

I receive a “REMINDER LETTER” from the hospital, reminding me that I have an appointment on the 28th December with the eye consultant. This is the first reminder I have had and to my knowledge I have never missed an appointment. I am undecided as to whether I consider it a good thing that the NHS has is reminding me about the appointment (I don’t forget – though I suspect many people do) or mildly insulting when they could quite easily have checked their statistics to see if I was a forgetfull sod and only then sent the letter if I was (oh and saved some money).

A quick search on the BBC News website reveals a whole load of articles about NHS missed appointments costing money.

Equally it costs the NHS money to send out reminders, I suspect that if you do the sums then the cost of a letter to me (who does show up) is balanced out by the letter having a positive effect on someone who probably would not. But still it should not be hard to ascertain whether its demonstrable that I do turn up for appointments and then not send me a letter. Thinking some more though it does occur to me that doing the above is going to require the use of IT systems and data analysis and we know about how the following go hand in hand together: government, NHS, IT, financial savings, success.

Nuff said I think.

They can both cost you an enormous amount of money.

How so? I hear you cry, well read on.

A vast wad of paperwork arrived yesterday from our solicitors related to impending dishwasher purchase.

Two items are of interest in relation to this entry:

1. Chancel Repair Liability
This is a legal repairing liability that dates back to the middle ages which enables some (pre reformation) churches to call upon the owners of properties that are on what used to be church land to repair the chancel (including alter, communion table and choir stalls). In return for this land the original owners became lay rectors and responsible for the upkeep of the church. This responsibility is inherited and so passed down to current owners of properties on former church land.

Apparently in 2003 the parish church of Aston Cantlow in Warwickshire demanded £95,260.84 for repair work from the owner of a local property. The owner who suitably unimpressed went to court, ultimately the church’s right was upheld by the House of Lords.

Naturally there was a public outcry and chancel repair liability is due to be scrapped in 2013, which does not help anyone at the moment who lives on “church” land.

So today there are Chancel Liability search companies, who for a modest fee will search land registry, church, local council and others records to try and ascertain whether any land was previously owned by a local church.

If you find out you are potentially eligible to Chancel Repair Liability (after all it depends on whether the church is falling down and whether they want the locals to pay for it), then you can take out an insurance premium for £59.88 which will cover you for up to £1,000,000. This in itself is I think quite reasonable.

Now here is the nub of the matter:

It is possible sometimes to approach the Dean of the church to enquire whether your plot of land is definitively affected by Chancel Repair Liability, but to do so automatically invokes forfeiture of the right to take out the indemnity insurance cover.

2. Environmental Cleanup
Land that now has a nice house on may have previously been a landfill site, waste disposal dump, chemical factory etc etc. Normal house searches do not provide information relating to previous usage of land, they only search for future use of land of your property and the surrounding area – so you know you can buy a house one day and not have a bypass (trying to avoid H2G2 gags at the moment) running through it the next.

Therefore its conceivable that your shiny house may have been built on a toxic waste site and you would not know.

The problem of this of course, is that if it transpires that your land contains items that are damaging to the environment the its your problem about clearing it up. Not the previous owners, yours.

So for another reasonable fee, though notably more than the Chancel Repair Liability charge you can have another search done, this time through a different set of data providers to find out that you are living on a toxic waste dump.

It therefore is not inconceivable that you could end up living on a toxic waste dump that was owned by a church that is falling down and the diocese expect you to pay to repair the church and have the government expect you to sort the land out.

But what irritates me is that I have to pay more money to find that out.

A while ago mrspao acquired a couple of make your own gingerbread houses and decided that this evening was the time to construct them.

They come in packaging that looks like this:

The cutesy packaging suggests (to me at least) that this is a kiddy thing, after all what could be more fun than building and decorating your own gingerbread house?

The instructions on the back of the box say that you need to melt 200 grams of sugar to use as glue. So I did.

I then proceeded to construct the house, as is the case with any modelling kit glue ends up on fingers.

Liquid sugar glue by its nature is hot. Very very pissing hot.

Yes I have burnt my fingers, not badly I hasten to add, but certainly enough that around an hour later I know that I have had a slight hot sugar glue accident.

What I wonder is who in their right minds would let a child build one of these bastards? Why oh why do they appear to be marketed for kids?

After ten days of intense action of the guess how many spams got automatically filed in my spam folder whilst on holiday, the results are now in.

Independant judges have collated the entries and ascertained the winner.

I have to admit that the total was quite a lot lower than I expected, but this is mainly due to central Computing Services changing part of the mail system so that a large proportion of spam is rejected at delivery time consequently my own guestimate was incorrect.

So without further preamble its time to announce that total number of spam mails in my spam folder when I returned to work this morning was: 4569

There were many entries and the heat of competition was almost too much for my web hosting companys web server. The entries ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous and so without further delay the winner is:

Tim!

Congratulations.

Your prize will be delivered in due course.

Modern restoration, originally uploaded by paosborneuk.

I was struck by the modern facilities used to protect the restorers as they work on the cathedral, the contrast of the colours between the modern and the old seemed to echo the contrast between modern scaffolding and the original stone.