A Hospital Trust Goes Bust
It has been reported that an NHS Trust has gone bust.
I have a heart problem and attend The Heart Hospital, which is part of the University College London Hospitals Trust.
It was built as a private hospital and went bust. UCLH then stepped in to clean up the mess and bought a bargain.
I suspect that anything worth saving from the South London Healthcare NHS Trust will be saved, at little inconvenience to patients. Hopefully, the managers, accountants, politicians and bankers who created the mess, will get their proper rewards.
Olympic Security in Perspective
It has been reported, that two British climbers and five are missing after an avalanche in France.
We are rightly worried about security for the Olympic Games, but I think we are very much overly so.
Most of the people-related problems in the Olympics, will be drunks falling under Tube trains and serious health problems like heart attacks. As a regular user of London’s transport network, I know my places, where problems are likely to occur, but I won’t follow the government and most of those listening to radio phone-ins and scare-monger.
As I write this there is a Colonel on the radio, saying that we wouldn’t be able to provide the extra security, once we’ve reduced the size of the Armed Forces. I’ve heard his arguments many times before from left-wing union leaders, when a factory is being closed.
The real security failure has been the non-fulfilment of the contract by G4S to provide the security, they said they would provide.
The largest mole, I’ve ever seen, has just scurried down my road in the direction of the Olympic site. I assume, he’s part of the moles’ Mountain Brigade.
Talking up Defiencies
They’ve just had a very one-sided phone-in on BBC Radio 5, with virtually an hour of the dismal Jimmies and Jennies complaining about all the inadequacies.
We’ve just had a volunteer complaining, that they are not being given car parking on the Olympic Park. It sounds to me, that they should have been turned down as a volunteer.
Let’s face it, if you don’t like the conditions, don’t volunteer.
We should be celebrating what we got right.
My field is project management and we should be celebrating the fact that all of the venues and transport links have been constructed on time and generally on budget.
Remember the Olympic Park is built in a marsh and with all the bad weather we’ve been having lately, that has not only caused construction problems, but made the design of the park difficult. Luckily, the main site of the Games is by the River Lea and Joseph Bazalette‘s massive Northern Outfall Sewer, so hopefully we’ll cope, with water and sewage.
I’ve watched the plans unfold and East London has improved beyond all expectations.
When we won the bid the London Overground from New Cross to Dalston and from Stratford to Richmond only partly existed as a set of travelling urinals. now it is a modern railway with new trains, signalling and completely renewed track. The East London Line deserves five stars in its own right, as it was built through Brunel’s Thames Tunnel of 1840 and under the Kingsland Road, without breaking anything.
As the icing, London has now got its magnificent cable-car, which will be the fun legacy of the games.
And now the phone-in is talking about the failure of the O2 mobile phone network. My Nokia 6310i works well on O2 at the moment.
Does Trump Have A Brain?
In this report from the BBC, about the opening of Donald Trump’s new golf course near Aberdeen, there is these two paragraphs.
The development at Menie has been controversial, with environmental campaigners opposed to the construction of a course on protected sand dunes.
However, Mr Trump said he believed he had created the world’s greatest course.
I know nothing about golf, except a few good jokes, but no sporting venue could be called the greatest in the world, just after it opened. If I take my local football stadium, the Emirates, where Arsenal play, it was designed to be one of the best club grounds in the world and it is certainly good. But no Gooner would say it is the best for a few years yet, until he or she has visited every club ground with a capacity of over 60,000 or so.
Trawl the Internet and there is a lot of deep discussion about this golf course. I have read some tonight on respected web sites and I can’t get it out of my head, that the development has annoyed too many people to succeed. As I said, I know nothing about golf, but many others do and they will build developments, that will appeal to Trump’s target market. If they are better courses, the punters won’t go to Trump’s course. Trump should also remember he’s not dealing with bumpkins in the Southern part of the United States, but proud Scots, who don’t like being told they are wrong. Has he ever watched Local Hero?
I also feel that Trump is going to have to fight the dunes at Menie. I used to live at Felixstowe and I know Suffolk isn’t Scotland, but the dunes there had a mind of their own, which didn’t help the golf course by the Deben.
Trainers Boycott Race at Worcester Over Low Prize Money
It had to happen, as after all bookmakers can go off-shore to avoid paying tax and the levy, which funds prize money, but trainers can’t train horses in Gibraltar and fly them in for the race.
Unless a solution is found, racing will die in the UK and the mugs will bet on football, videos of horse racing and flies crawling up the wall.
If the British public reckon bankers are an evil lot, then they should take a strong look at bookmakers.
Swiss Prosecutor Says FIFA Took Bribes
It would appear from these statements by Swiss prosecutors, that FIFA was as bent as a nine-bob note when it was run by Joao Havelange. In a well-crafted phrase by an old accountancy mate, many at the top in FIFA have been screwed, glued and tattooed.
How far is this investigation going to go?
Fifty Shades of Grey on the Tube
This morning,as I went to the dentist on the Central line, I noticed that the young lady next to me was reading a book. But not just any book, but Fifty Shades of Grey.
It’s funny, but I don’t think a man would even have read Lady Chatterley’s Lover on the tube even a dozen or so years ago.
When To Have Children!
I was 21 when we married and my wife was a year younger and at Liverpool University, which I’d just left.
By our mid-twenties, we had three small children, I’d started a successful programming business and my wife was on her second first degree in law at University College London.
By our early forties, she was a very successful barrister and I was a partner in a company that changed the way large projects were handled throughout the world.
In the last five years, my late wife and our youngest son have died from cancer and I’ve had a serious stroke.
So life has been a roller coaster and like all good London mongrels, I’ll win the fight in the end. But neither of us ever regretted having our children early.
Is This Bad Summer Caused By Climate Change?
It may be but there are many other factors at work.
I went to a lecture given by an eminent scientist from Cambridge about the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami.
He said that much of the trouble around the nuclear power stations was caused by inadequate sea defences against a known risk. However in Tokyo, everything swayed, but there were only two deaths, as buildings were designed to withstand a much larger earthquake.
The moral is that we should build to withstand the worst that nature can throw at us.
So that means no building on flood plains and probably moving some of our most picturesque villages to safer places.
Incidentally, my father always said that if you buy a house, make sure it’s on high ground and doesn’t get flooded.
James Miller
Reading Your Partner’s Messages
There has been a bit of a discussion, about celebrities reading their partner’s text messages and e-mails.
My late wife, C, never learned how to read or write text messages, much to the dismay of her work colleagues and friends, so they used to send any urgent messages to me anyway.
I wish she was still here, so I could still pass them on as necessary.
The Anonymous Widower 