Monitoring, insurance and eBay!

13 August 2013

We've just sat and watched last night's Horizon programme on BBC iPlayer.  This week it was covering the latest efforts in health monitoring - but by us, not our GP.  I sat there watching and listening and wondering where things will go next.  Being able to monitor your health yourself looks to be a great idea, but surely most of us do it to some extent anyway.  One guy on the show was doing so much self monitoring he was covering 1500 items.  Most of them would be way over our heads and even if we found them we wouldn't know what it meant, even with his colour coding. 

The programme does raise lots of questions of course and points to us as individuals taking a lot more responsibility for our overall health.  One lady on their found out that a glass of red wine before bed didn't do her any good at and interfered with her sleep that night.  Another one aways had a cup of de-cafe coffee at around 9pm.  That also interfered with her sleep.  We all know about the healthy diet part of course but for whatever reason so many of us ignore it or just pay lips service to it.  The top and bottom of the hour long show ultimately came down to just one item - regular exercise!

Insurance companies sell all sorts of cover; whatever you like doing there seems to be a risk in it which can be covered by an insurance company.  They are first class at finding new markets.  In the current issue of Writing Magazine there's an article about writers taking out insurance in case of libel and so on.  OK, fine.  But I wonder how quick they will be paying out if policy holder ever has to make a claim on it.  They always look for a way of getting out of paying up.  And this leads back the last night's Horizon.  At some point the sellers of health service insurance will get on board the self-monitoring band wagon and will have yet another reason to turn down claims.  And just how much will the NHS use the idea to refuse treatment.  I could do with a hip replacement but I've been told point blank by the GP that it won't be down while I weigh as much as I do, it won't get done. 

So then ... self monitoring seems to be a good idea on first look, but how will it play out in the future?  That is a question that will come to be very important in years to come!

At long last I'm out of debt to eBay!  That sounds bad dunnit?  But actually the debt was only £19.93.  It came about because NatWest sent me a new debit card sometime ago and it's taken me all this time, around 14 months, asking eBay and PayPal how to change my card details.  All I needed to do was to add another card then remove the old one.  14 bloody months just to do that!  What a game of silly sods!

Today's photo is of a set of three benches in Dorktown centre ...  

As you can see they're arranged in a triangle under some trees.  It's actually quite a nice spot really and one I like to sit at when I'm on my scooter with my camera just people watching. 

And today's funny ...

An elderly woman died last month.
Having never married, she requested no male pallbearers.
In her handwritten instructions for her memorial service, she wrote, 'They wouldn't take me out while I was alive, I don't want them to take me out when I'm dead.'