All very taxing ...

7 November

It’s Remembrance Weekend and kicks off tonight with the annual Festival at the Royal Albert Hall. In the morning, if we can’t get to a service somewhere, then we should all be watching the one on telly Whitehall in London. I really must get my medals sorted out and then I shall be able to take a more involved role next year perhaps.  

Well, now a feel tad daft. Jan and Kile are back on the Wii so I’ve put a disc on to play – and got nowt. I hunted about looking for the fault and then I noticed the headphone jack wasn’t in place … derrrrrrrr

Oh yes, Kile is here and is going home today and not Sunday as he normal does. That’s partly because I have a hospital appointment tomorrow over at the Walsgrave in Coventry, just a follow-up on the Parkinsons thing the other week. But the things is, now I’m all over the place with the days now because we are not used to him arriving on Thursday and going back on Saturday.

This test I’m having tomorrow – it’s a nerve and conductivity test and it should take an hour to conduct. An hour testing, waiting time and so on, is likely to make it an expensive appointment to keep, solely because of parking fees. As it is, we need some shopping so Jan will drop me off at the main entrance and then drive the two miles back to Asda and get it done. Then she can sit in the café and wait for me to call and let her know I’m ready … of yes, better make sure me phone is fully charged.

Hospital parking charges are big issue all across the UK unfortunately. We patients are the ones picking up the cost, it really is a tax on illness, no matter what they all claim. There’s a lot of patients and we are being treated as a cash cow. The Walsgrave is a fairly new hospital and part of the parking contract promised a certain income for the management company. To begin with that level wasn’t reached, so the hospital had to make up the difference, and that was really way out of order and must have impacted on patient care somewhere along the line, no matter what they say.

The NHS and money will be an ongoing issue for years to come simply because of our growing and longer lived population. And that’s the thing isn’t it? If we want a national health service free at point of delivery, as it first promised, then we need to pay for it. And it’s no good moaning about it, we HAVE to stump up the dosh in our taxes. Of course, most of us don’t have any choice do we? It’s stopped from our pay before we see it. The growing number of companies and individuals who are fiddling their taxes need to be clamped down on hard.

Yet are our taxes being spent wisely though? Now that is just as big an issue as the tax cheats too. I’m sure we all have our favourite issues where dosh should and shouldn’t be spent. Was it wise to build to new aircraft carries when there are no airplanes to fly off them? Do we really need a new Trident system? And what of HS2, who will we will really get the best from it? Are the time savings really worth the cost of building it? And what can we do about it? Very little methinks. Lot of questions there; tomorrow I shall be asking even more … … …

Today’s photo … 

The Hussy statue at the main car entrance, which alone is waste of dosh cos you can hardly see it as you enter and leave the site. I have to get a better shot of it at some time.

Today’s funny …

A girl asks her father, "Why does it rain? Is it God sweating or crying?" "No," says her father, "it rains to make the plants grow. Do you understand?" "Not exactly," says the girl. "Why does it rain on the sidewalk?"