|
|
|
May 16th, 2011
12:57 pm - March to Save the NHS...
...or How the secretary of state for health proposes to abolish the NHS in England
GP-led commissioning boards. Sounds so technical, doesn't it. There is an interesting account in the British Medical Journal as to just how bad these proposals are, and it's scary.
To quote from the article:
The government proposes a commercial system in which the NHS is reduced to the role of government payer, equivalent to Medicare and Medicaid schemes in the US.
I'm seriously thinking about trying to make it along to the March to Save the NHS tomorrow evening. Really hoping it doesn't turn nasty though...
|
March 15th, 2011
11:46 pm - Census meme
March 2011
Just this month properly moved in to a two bed flat I'm renting in Stroud Green, London having three months earlier started a new job working as a sysadmin for a startup running an online lottery. Still surrounded by boxes with barely space to move, but very much enjoying the change and looking forward to going to Whitby later this month.
March 2001
Living in a three bed house in Mawson Road, Cambridge, by this time I think by myself, working as a sysadmin at Global Graphics, which had only changed its name to that from Harlequin three months earlier. Listening to trance and techno music although not really going out clubbing or going to raves any more. Not in any way a goth - generally wore brightly coloured T-shirts and blue jeans.
March 1991
Had just moved in to Shelford Road the previous month, sharing with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2) arnhem, Jon and David. Not a veggie back then. Working as a LISP programmer at Harlequin. Intrigued by the still fairly new and underground rave scene but not sure if at this point I'd quite started to get into the new music that back then was known as hardcore techno.
March 1981
Still at school and living with my parents in Hawthorn Road, Bamford, Rochdale. In the Upper Fourth at Hulme Grammar. Probably spending most of my spare time reading magazines such as Computing Today and anticipating the release of the BBC Micro. Short hair and utterly conventional.
March 1971
Just started primary school six months earlier at Bamford Primary. My baby sister was less than a year old.
[Edited variously]
|
February 7th, 2011
 | 01:48 am - This is London
I can't think the words "This is London" without immediately hearing Lillibullero in my mind.
This post, however, is brought to you not from the studios of the BBC World Service of a bygone age, but from the heart of Stroud Green.
Ok, I've not moved properly yet—that will have to wait until I can organize removals—I just hired a Streetcar van to bring a few basics down to London. But I am back in London, after an absence of 42 years, almost to the week.
This is London :-)
-roy
|
January 24th, 2011
09:40 pm - This is East India
I stand within an articulated car of the Docklands Light Railway, reading the Evening Standard whilst trying not to fall over as the computer-driven train lurches unevenly. A disembodied voice declares, incongruously, "This is East India", but I notice too late. When I look up from my newspaper all I see through the window is East London.
|
January 4th, 2011
09:12 pm - Places I slept at least one night in 2010
Hmm, I don't think my list is going to be as long as some people's, but let's give it a go.
In no particular order:
Cambridge
Rochdale
Stockport
London
Whitby
Bradford
Leeds
Concord, Mass., USA
Arlington, Va., USA
-roy
|
December 6th, 2010
03:13 pm - Birds
This morning the landlord sent a gardener round to cut down the trees in my garden.
This afternoon there are some very confused birds walking around the tree stump not quite understanding what has happened to their tree.
-roy
|
December 3rd, 2010
01:29 pm - Farming Today
I suppose I was dimly aware of the theoretical possibility, but it never really dawned on me that it is possible to have to be up in the morning sufficiently early that the Today programme hasn't even started yet.
-roy
location: London
mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/shock.gif) anxious
|
September 19th, 2010
03:03 am - World Cities
So, it appears that one of (many) attempts to define and categorize the notion of a 'World City' is from the Globalization and World Cities Study Group at Loughborough Univirsity. Their 2008 study lists 12 classes of world city, from Alpha++ (the most important category, comprising just New York and London) down to Sufficiency, the lowest level of city that they categorize.
The list is here. I think I've visited at least one city in every category (two or more in many catogories). The only category I don't have 100% confidence in is Gamma
( My personal World City list )
|
September 16th, 2010
| 02:04 am - Tidying
Hmmm, my house is more tidy than it has been in far too long. The fact that my landlord is inspecting tomorrow is, of course, merely coincidental :-)
It is kind of weird (in a good way) having a living room free of 'stuff' piled up on the floor all over the place -- feels like a different house!
Sadly the same cannot be said for the garden :-(
-roy
|
May 9th, 2010
12:52 pm - What if Brown resigned?
With many calling for Gordon Brown to stand down immediately, I'm wondering what this would mean? With coalition talks potentially many days away from a conclusion, wouldn't this result in an extended period without a government?
If we want proportional representation, then we need to get used to the idea of the caretaker government which continues to govern during the coalition negotiations. That's how it works elsewhere, doesn't it? To leave the country with the office of Prime Minister vacant for (potentially) a week, during a financial crisis would seem to me to be madness.
Of course, he could make an announcement about standing down in the near future. But standing down now?—surely it is, as he says, his duty to continue to do his job until or unless a new PM is chosen.
-roy
|
|
|
