The Discontinuous NHS
I am a control engineer by training, although I haven’t really practised since the early 1970s. But any control engineer will tell you that the most difficult system to control is one with discontinuities. I always liken it to riding a bicycle, which you may be able to do happily on the flat, but then you need to go up or down a kerb and you have a problem.
Some of the biggest problems we get in life are concerned with discontinuities; such as birth, marriages and deaths. We also get a whole series of problems when we do something like move house.
Organisations such as the banks, insurance, utility and telephone companies, major retailers, supermarkets and some government agenices like the DVLC, TV Licensing and a few others, have used modern methods, such as web sites, e-mail, text messaging and dare I say it well-designed call centres to liase with their customers in whatever way those important customers find easiest and most convenient. If say a gas company doesn’t do what the customers want, then those same customers will desert it.
Moving wasn’t particularly difficult for me, with respect to gas, electricity, banks, gas, water, credit cards, broadband, TV and phones, even if I have a couple of minor issues to sort out.
One problem I have had was getting used to the refuse system. But Hackney council were very helpful over the phone and the binmen sorted out the small details. But in an ideal world all councils would use the same collection system. In a few years time, they probably will, as one method will probably be cheapest for all councils to operate for a variety of reasons. The method will probably have a high level of recycling too.
But the NHS seems almost to be designed to be discontinuous.
My previous and current surgeries are run on different lines, probably use different computer systems and have made my transfer a lot more difficult than it should be, as I can’t understand, why the same system is not used in both places. Would, BP, Shell or Esso, use different computer systems in all the garages they supply with fuel? I don’t know, but I suspect they don’t!
Today, I miscalculated when I would run out of tablets. I thought I had another weeks supply, which I do, except for the statins I take. So I needed to get some more.
At my previous surgery, I just e-mailed them and they would be ready within 24 hours. But my new surgery doesn’t have a pharmacist and after visiting them this morning, they informed me, I wouldn’t get the prescription forms until tomorrow afternoon. I had assumed as it was a repeat prescriptiuon, I could just pick one up and get it dispensed. I thought that I might be able to get some in emergency at a pharmacist, but this would need a visit to a doctor at an NHS walk-in centre. Would we accept such a system for buying groceries at Tesco’s.
We need two things.
- Every surgery should use similar systems and methods. They should also make it clear to new patients, how you get repeat prescriptions.
- All repeat prescriptions, should be on a central NHS database, so that you can walk into any pharmacy and get the drugs you need. But would that be giving too much power to the patient and pharmacists? What would happen say if I was on holiday in Cromer and I lost my backpack with all my drugs in it? I suspect, it would probably take a whole day to sort it out!
The NHS might save billions by doing what any sensible organisation would do and many government agencies already do. Service would improve to the more modern standards that people expect and receive from many companies they deal with on a day-to-day basis.
More Bad Design
I paid a lot of money for my Simple Human bin and although it ticks a few boxes, it doesn’t tick the one for good design.
A Bad Design of Bin
The biggest problem is that it doesn’t fit the standard size of bag you get from any British shop in a roll. You can buy special ones, but then that is a waste of money and I can’t buy them locally. So if you’re designing something to be sold in the UK, then design it for the British market. My previous kitchen was so much better, with a hole in the chopping board.
Perhaps a better design, would be to have a strong cylindrical metal bin, which was designed to take the standard UK swing bin liner. It would have a wooden top, with a stopper in the middle, so that the tea-bag juggle was easy. The top wouldn’t be a heavy chopping board, but it could be used for a certain amount of light work, when say you were cutting vegetables or peeling onions. You then lift the stopper and puh the rubbish through. The top would be small enough to be able to be properly washed in the sink.
I actually have a prototype in the house in that my linen basket is almost this design, with a metal cylinder and a wooden top.
A Miller of Sweden Linen Basket
But of course it doesn’t have a stopper, but the basic design is there. I even use the hole to put my underwear and socks into the basket.
You could even make it a double decker bin, with an unlined bottom bin for dry recyclables like paper and beer bottles. This would also get the chopping board top up to worktop height.
I want one! And I want it now! If I don’t get one, I’ll have a fit!
I Do Hate Bad Design
As they say, a widow’s work is never done, but in this house it would help if everything was properly designed. Monday is washing day and look what I have to put up with to do it.
How Not to Install a Washing Machine
There is nothing wrong with the washing machine, except that a washer/dryer would be much better, but it is installed in a cupboard in the hall, along with the boiler and the hot water cylinder.
This picture doesn’t quite do the installation justice, as the flash overcame one of the biggest problems and that is the lack of light, as there is no light in the cupboard and no light in the hall. So I now use a torch to check that I haven’t dropped an escaped sock on the floor.
It would also help if I was a few centimetres taller.
So if I ever find the so-called architect or designer, who thought this up, he’ll get more than a pece of my mind. It was obviously a man, as women tend to be shorter and wouldn’t have mounted the machine so high.
There is never any excuse for bad design. At least I had an architect at my housewarming and he was able to suggest a few things for the other faults in the house that annoy me.
Cash Point Machines
I do have a couple of issues with cash point machines, in that Some touch screens are a bit difficult to see and operate for me and I don’t like new £20 notes, as in one incident I gave someone forty by mistake and got the change for twenty.
on a rainy daya couple of weeks ago, I was passing Nationwide at the Angel and needed some money, so I went inside. They had installed a new machine inside and I found it a lot easier to use. It was also placed by a row of seats, so I could sit down, whilst I separated the £20 notes and buried them in the depths of my backpack.
So now, if I’m in that area, I’ll always go to that branch of my bank, Nationwide, if I need some cash. It may not be in their interest, as now I’ll get twenty or thirty out several times a week, instead of perhaps one lot of two hundred. But I do know, that I can do everything safely in the branch and don’t misplace my card, which I sometimes am wont to do.
As a comparison, I went into a friend’s bank with her and it wasn’t relaxed at all and there was nowhere to sit.
I had thought, that it was just this Nationwide branch at the Angel, that was deliberately spacious. However, I’ve since used Moorgate and High Holborn and found similar, although not identical designs. In fact in High Holborn yesterday, with the rain being biblical outside, one of the staff was virtually offering the branch to anybody who came in, as a haven of rest.
So are we seeing a change in banks attitudes, where customers are higher up the priority list? Some banking adverts say so, but are they just words and not deeds?
More Engineering Pornography
I have a full-size electric drill, but I need something light to put plugs in the plasterboard walls, as although the hand-drill is good, the chuck is not very good and I can’t drill holes deeper than a couple of centimetres.
So I went to Franchi in the Holloway Road and bought a Bosch wine bottle opener.
Bosch IXO Vino
But it also puts in screws and drills holes.
Bosch IXO Vino with Drill Bit
It is actually quite powerful and is ideal for those small jobs, which don’t need the strongest of tools. It also sits in a small charger/holder, so you don’t have to charge it up, when you haven’t used it for a few months.
So ladies, you now know what to buy your man for his birthday! Or for yourself, if you’re an alcoholic with a penchant for expensive wine in corked bottles and you don’t have the strongest of hands.
A Solution to Pavement Obstacles?
Nothing annoys me more as I walk around, than blocked pavements and badly designed street furniture, such as the obstacles I described in this post. Bicycles chained to railings in cities like Cambridge are a problem too and they hurt when you bump into them.
I have thought about carrying a can of orange spray paint. it would probably get me publicity, but I would probably get arrested too.
So what is needed is a simple card label on the end of a loop of orange ribbon or cord, that could be easily slipped over the offending article. The card might say something like.
I have had a stroke and can’t see too well. Because of this, I nearly bumped into this obstacle that you kindly placed to injure me. In this case there was no harm done, but please move it before you hurt someone with limited mobility or vision.
I would put a suitable e-mail address on it for a response.
You could also sell advertising on the back for charity.
The Castle Climbing Centre
Ever since I started driving in London in the 1960s, i’ve been past this building on Green Lane.
The Castle Climbing Centre
Yesterday, I walked past the building, which was originally a Victorian pumping station and found that it is now an indoor climbing centre. What a good use for a magnificent building!
A Walk Down Memory Lane
Or more correctly between Turnpike Lane and Wood Green stations on the Piccadilly Line.
I’d taken a 141 bus to Turnpike Lane from the end of my road and alighted opposite the station.
Turnpike Lane Tube Station
Or should I put the local name underneath which sounded like Turnpicky Larny. I wonder if it’s still used.
I walked down the west side of Wood Green High Road and the first place I remembered was the Marks and Spencer on the other side.
Marks and Spencer at Wood Green
I didn’t go in, but it certainly looked to be in a worse state than how I remember it from the 1960s, when it was one of their flagship stores. I visited it many times, as a bag carrier for my mother, when she used to do the food shopping, when she was working with my father in Wood Green.
Further up you can still see the remains of the old Wood Green Empire above the Halifax.
The Remains of the Wood Green Empire
I can remember going there once to see the pantomime. It may have been Babes in the Wood, with Ted Ray, but even if I hadn’t had the stroke, I wouldn’t be sure.
My father also claimed that he’d appeared on the stage there in a variety show. But at one time, I know he did print the programs and posters for the theatre, so perhaps he did a deal. Knowing him, that could have been possible.
The centre of Wood Green High Road used to be crossed by a railway bridge that carried the Palace Gates railway line to Palace Gates from Seven Sisters. At one time there was a station in the area called Noel Park and Wood Green, but although I can remember the bridge and trains running on the line, I can’t remember the station. To the south of the bridge there used to be a pub called the Alexandra, which was pulled down in the 1960s or just before to build Wood Green’s first supermarket. Now the whole area has been redeveloped as Wood Green Shopping City.
Wood Green Shopping City
Moving along towards Wood Green tube station, I passed what some refer to correctly as the Broadway, but I just remember it as the place where you caught the trolley buses. On the left there used to be a restaurant called the QS for Quick Service and one of the first burger bars. I can remember visiting both quite a few times with my mother. I can still remember and smell, the chef, Ally, turning the greasy burgers as he fried them.
On the corner opposite the tube station, there is a pub which is now called the Goose.
The Goose, Wood Green
I think the pub used to be called the Nag’s Head and it is part of a family tale. My father used to live with his mother over the print works in Station Road, which is just around the corner. One Sunday morning her dog, who was a renowned thief, arrived back with a large cooked joint of beef in his jaws. My grandmother, immediately washed such a prize present off and that was the family’s Sunday lunch. My father surmised that the chef in the Nag’s Head had put the cooked joint on the window sill of the kitchen at the back of the pub to cool down a bit and the dog just couldn’t resist.
I then crossed the road by the tube station to catch a 141 bus back home from where the trolley buses stopped.
Wood Green Tube Station
All of these stations from Cockfosters to Turnpike Lane are very much part of my childhood and I remember them all with affection.
Aldous Eveleigh
In 1977, C purchased a small painting by Aldous Eveleigh at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
Glove Puppet by Aldous Eveleigh
It would appear that the artist is still creating art, but probably in a very different way.
It’s also nice to think that C had taste, as it would appear he’s more famous than he was.
Hail the Humble Hand Drill
The walls in my new house are probably very typical of modern houses, in that with one exception they are all plasterboard sandwiching air. So to put pictures up, the averahe picture nail is not the best and a plug and screw is better especially, if the picture is a bit weighty.
Given the fact, that my hands are a not the best, I’ve fund that a humble hand drill is the best way to drill the walls, as I have so much more control.
A Humble Hand Drill
My father had a couple of very smart hand drills, which you’d never see today. He also had a drill chuck, with just a T-handle on it, which was ideal for making holes in delicate materials. It was always in demand in the autumn for drilling holes in conkers.
