Feeling a little better
i’m actually writing this on the computer attsched to the hospital bed. So if it’s crap I apologise.
The care is excellent and I’ve had umpteen CT scsns. Chinese food makes excellent hospital, but then I knew that because when C. had our first child in the middlesex in London, there was a lady from the chinese legation in London who had her baby at the same time and she had her food brought in and shared it with everyone else.
The food is all gluten free.
Anti-Histamines
The hay fever seems to have got worse over the last few weeks, so in the end I tried some anti-histamine allergy relief tablets from Boots.
They just made me go to sleep all the times. They also said that you can’t drink alcohol with them.
So I suppose, I guess I just better put up with the hay fever.
Cloud Cuckoo Politics
I listened to Chris Giles of the Financial Times last night on BBC Radio5’s Drive programme. He said that the various parties promises on the deficit don’t add up. They have promised saving in the order of ten billion or so, when documents from the Treasury show that we need to save around three times that much.
I’ve been in Newcastle over the weekend as you have seen and up there, they are worried about losing jobs when the new government cuts and cuts hard. After all large numbers of jobs in the North East are either directly with the government or strongly supported. Many too, are in-line for savage cuts because of new technology.
So would NuLabor tell the truth in the North East? No! But the Tories and the Lib Dems have nothing to lose there, so they would at least do the dirty deed after the election.
So what can be cut, what can be improved and how can we raise more revenue?
There are government programmes that can go like Trident, ID Cards, the two aircraft carriers, the Joint Strike Fighter and some other defence projects. Most though will not show up until about 2017.
I have one bitch on what can be improved in the NHS. Every time I go between my GP and Addenbrooke’s I have to tell the other doctor what the previous one, as the two doctors do not have access to the same database. How much does that cost the NHS? And how many other systems show a total lack of joined up thinking?
When we talk about efficiency savings, that is what we’re talking about and it will cost jobs in the NHS and agencies like the Police. But these will mainly be in back-office clerical areas. Well! They should be, but will government really bite the bullet.
Most taxes don’t raise more than about five billion.
So if you want to raise large amounts of taxes, then you increase the big ones like Income Tax, National Insurance, VAT, Corporation Tax and energy taxes.
Income Tax needs to be restructured with perhaps a 50% top rate and very much higher thresholds at the bottom. But I would allow tax relief on any salary you pay to others. So if you employed a nanny or a gardener, then this would be allowed. This may seem something for the well off, but it would also enable anybody to investigate ideas without having to go to the expense of setting up companies and finding loopholes in the tax system.
In other words you restructure Income Tax so that it is basically tax neutral for individuals but creates more jobs, which therefor will increase the tax take and also decrease the benefit take.
I’d also abolish National Insurance and combine it with Income Tax, as that is what it is, a secondary Income Tax.
At the same time, I’d also abolish Inheritance Tax and put three pence on the top rates of Income Tax. This would mean that a lot of rich people would move here and they would create employment. It would also have other employment benefits as people would do what was best at the time, rather than spend fortune avoiding Inheritance Tax.
I’m afraid VAT will probably have to go up. There is no other way to raise significant revenue. As VAT is generally only paid by consumers, as companies offset it, I would prefer that the tax rises were here, than before people got their money.
Corporation Tax is already high compared to other countries in Europe. If it is raised we are in danger of losing companies abroad. So raising it is a no-no, but lowering it may well raise more revenue as other companies would move here.
Now we come to energy taxes. They should be raised substantially. If coupled with increases in Income Tax thresholds they would publish the profligate. I would abolish Vehicle Excise Duty and just have a Vehicle Registration Fee for every time a vehicle changes hands.
Now, I am a control engineer by training and a lot of this is standard control theory, where you do something and you get lots of secondary effects. You just have to make sure that the secondary effects create jobs and thus raise Income Tax take and reduce benefits.
NuLabor has dug us into a big hole. We will only get out by being radical. Correct that; very radical.
Hay Fever
To add to all my problems, I seem to be suffering from awful hay fever.
C’est la vie!
But I never suffered before I was diagnosed as a coeliac.
Computers Beat Doctors at Diagnosing Child Illnesses
This was a headline in The Independent.
A computer has proved more accurate in diagnosing severe fever in children than doctors using their clinical judgement, researchers have found.
Is it the way medicine is going, as it looks like the computer system is better in this case? There’s no reason to believe that in certain areas, this may well be possible.
As a coeliac and a computer person, I’ve always felt that the diagnosis of coeliac disease could be done by means of a simple on-line system, that gave an indication that could be confirmed by proper tests. This is because coeliac disease shows itself in many and diverse ways. I had chronic dandruff for a start and would you see a gastroenterologist for that?
I think too, you have to look at the statistics of medicine and especially GPs. My granddaughter was born with a congenital hernia of the diaphragm. She’s fine now and just like any other eight-year-old. Now this problem occurs in about one in 3,000 babies. When I told my GP about my granddaughter, she said she’d never come across one in general practice.
So perhaps the computer can be much better with rare complaints.
A First Game of Real Tennis
Well not the first, but the first game since I had the stroke. In fact it was exactly five weeks since my last game.
I lost that one, just like I lost the one today. But today wasn’t disastrous as I lost the set 6-2 and was leading the second 5-1 at one point. When time ran out I was 5-4 ahead. Was I tiring? I won’t use that excuse.
Now what will be interesting is to see how my handicap progresses in future months. I haven’t checked but I think it is about 54.
Could games with a rigorous handicap system like real tennis be used to gauge how people are progressing with various brain and mental problems?
Head and Shoulders Shampoo
I’ve just seen an advert on Sky for this.
I tried it along with many other anti-dandruff shampoos over the years before I was diagnosed as a coeliac. None worked very well at all.
But after being diagnosed as a coeliac and going on a gluten-free diet, the dandruff went within two weeks.
Medical Progress
I got my driving licence back on Thursday and yesterday I went to see my stroke doctor at Addenbrooke’s.
So how do I feel both physically and mentally?
Take yesterday.
I needed to get the Lotus Elan back from having the MOT from Newmarket and as everyone was busy and my secretary was not in, no-one could give me a lift. So it was get out my trusty Brompton and cycle. It should have been easy as although the trip was about sixteen kilometres, most of it is downhill. Or at least it is if I go the shortest, but not the car-friendliest route. But the Brompton slipped into fifth and couldn’t get anything lower than fourth. And then there was the cold strong headwind.
But even so I made it easily in an hour. I suspect I would be a lot quicker on my proper bicycle with the wind the other way.
On Wednesday the stroke doctor had told me that I had a leaky valve. Now sometimes I think I can tell when it starts to leak. Or am I imagining things. I just push myself too hard and then I get a bit breathless, but if I get a rhythm going, I can pedal for over an hour. Especially in Holland, where they have abolished hills by law.
It was nice to get back in the Lotus, which is now all pristine and clean. I must take a few photos before it gets dirty!
Mentally perhaps I worry, but then who wouldn’t after what I’ve been through.
But as to brain function, it all seems to be working. Word functions such as spelling are as good (or bad) as they ever was but I can only type with two fingers. But then I never used more. I do various memory functions when I collect my Zopa statistics, and these are just the same.
So far so good.
Except for one curious thing. I do the Sudoku in The Times every day and have always found that the Super Fiendish were beyond my powers, unless I resulted to a process of elimination. That in my book is almost cheating.
But since the stroke, I can do these without problems in just a few minutes. I would never accuse such an august newspaper as The Times, of dumbing down, but they have just introduced a new section called Mind Games.
I should write to them.
My GP asked me how I was getting on mentally. After all, to lose one of your close family is perhaps normal or bad luck, but to lose two is catastrophic and a downright disaster. And then having a stroke doesn’t make you feel better. Does it? I don’t know, but I sometimes wonder that I now I think it can’t get any worse, so I just l0ook forward to the future. She asked me to fill in a form about how I was feeling. I scored very low. But then that was good.
So what did the stroke doctor say?
He explained that the leaky valve wasn’t probably trivial and that he would refer me to the cardiology team. But then I now feel that I’ve had it for years. I don’t think that my stamina was any better in 1980, than it is now. In fact sometimes I think it is better. But I’ve always had this problem of being able to walk miles and not being able to run more than a couple of hundred metres.
He also said that the heart monitor had said I had an irregular heart-beat.
Because of these problems, he suggested that I go on Warfarin or rat poison. This will thin the blood and make it less likely that I have a repeat occurrence of a stroke.
On the positive side, he felt that the research from Amsterdam on B6, coeliacs and strokes was interesting.
So I feel a lot better this morning, as we have a whole set of reasons, all of which it should be possible to overcome.
As I like to say – The Struggle Continues!
The BCA Drops the Case Against Simon Singh
The title says it all. But read about it in full on the BBC. Here are the first two paragraphs.
The British Chiropractic Association has dropped its libel action against the science writer Simon Singh.
Dr Singh was being sued by the organisation because of comments he had made in the Guardian in 2008 about the effectiveness of chiropractic.
I’m very happy for Simon, as this sort of case and costs give British justice a bad name.
If Simon had said something that was truly offensive, then the case should have been quickly found in the BCA’s favour.
If on the other hand what he said was fair comment or genuine scientific unease, then it should have been quickly settled the other way.
But the case was not and it cost Simon upwards of a six figure sum. That is too high a cost to get real justice, as how could the average man on the Clapham Omnibus be able to afford such a sum?
But will Simon’s comments about chiropractors really make much difference? I’ve used them in the past and in most cases they have done just a little for the problems I’ve suffered from. On the other hand, others swear by their treatments and go all the time. We all have our views and follow them, so I suspect you’ll either back Simon or the BCA.
In one case though, I had spectacular results from an alternative form of therapy. At school my humerus was broken in a bullying incident and I’d been plagued by pain in the upper arm and shoulder for well over forty years. I’d seen several doctors, surgeons and osteopaths and no-one had been able to sort it out. I’d even had a full MRI Scan.
But then I went to a guy, who put judo players back together. He analysed the problem and gave me a set of exercises to do. The result was that the shoulder acted like the other.
If there is a moral, it’s that you must try everything.
But let’s not resort to law to stop the competitors or promote things that may be against the established order.
The good methods will eventually win out and there will be losers.
The Anonymous Widower 