Royalty

 Why should an accident of birth make one person better than another? At the end of the day, we are all the same.  We all have hearts and brains and skin and lungs. What we choose to do with our lives may define us but I do not believe that anyone is innately superior just because of their parents.

I live in a kingdom. One internet definition of this is 'a politically organized community or major territorial unit having a monarchical form of government headed by a king or queen'. My country is packed into a unit with other countries because of the existence of a monarchy.  We are united and ruled by someone who has a job because of an accident of birth. A lucky sperm.

I realise it is not all wine and roses.  Prince Harry certainly feels that he has been the unlucky sperm and outlines his feelings in his ghostwritten autobiography Spare.  The book has sold exceptionally well, much to the annoyance of the press and news media in the UK who did their best to curtail sales whilst boosting their own by publishing all the juicy bits before it hit the shops.

France, America and Russia have all been sensible in going down the rebuild route.  I am not saying that these are model societies or any more equal but at least they have made an effort to get rid of the pseudo-mystical royalty bullshit.

My ancestors have been farmers and servants and shop keepers and nurses.  Many of them lived their lives in challenging environments and some of them did well for themselves.  To me, they are more valuable than kings but I realise that most of the world doesn't give a shit about them.  But at least, as far as I am aware, they never started any wars or invaded any countries.

My son will make his own way in life with whatever help I can give him.  It won't be much and he will need to work for what he wants in life.  He will be luckier than some. 

I wish every kid in the world was as lucky as my son.

COVID nutters

 The reality of the pandemic is clearly hard for some to accept.  It was always one of those existential fears that I had, having read lots of science fiction and studied biology and then medicine at university.  I'd read a lot about pandemics in the past.  I knew they were bad and that we were due one.  I knew it would probably happen.  It's just a bit of a shitter that it actually happened.

COVID has happened.  It's almost everywhere and it kills tons of people.  Accept it and deal with it.

Some people can't or won't accept it.  Some reach for a comfortable conspiracy theory to protect them from the brutal truth that humanity is sometimes insignificant in the face of nature and a wee virus could wipe us all out.  COVID-19 isn't going to eliminate the human race but it's still nasty.  We need to do what we can to reduce and avoid infections.  Vaccines, washing our hands, social distancing, wearing masks - all small personal sacrifices to reduce infection rates and reduce deaths.  Some people can't so this.  Idiots like Ian Brown of the Stone Roses and various quack doctors post mad shit on the internet and people believe them and that has consequences.

The UK government haven't helped.  Initial standard Eton arrogance quickly followed by bewildered blind  panic bolstered by exceptionalism from Dominic Cummings and standard avarice has muddied the water creating a fertile breeding ground for the conspiracy theory nutters.  We need a government of adults and the UK does not have this.  

We will be living with COVID forever.  We will probably need yearly COVID vaccines for some time and normality will take some time to return.

The big lesson is don't eat random wild animals.

Narconomics: How To Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright

I enjoy popular economics books and economics is one of many things that I wish I had a greater understanding of.  Much of economics is witchcraft and pretension papering over bullshit but it is useful to use different models to try to understand the world.  As part of my holiday week reading I decided to delve into the economics of drug dealing.

Wainwright is a British editor for the Economist and he writes well.  He decided to study the economics of the narcotics industry and he follows the journey of illegal drugs from farming to end user.  I've read a lot of this before in books like Freakonomics or the Undercover Economist but Wainwright does add some additional colour and detail to the scenarios.

Of particular interest to modern readers are sections on the use of legal highs in New Zealand, the legalisation of cannabis in Colorado and the impact of internet retailers (on the dark web) on the distribution and sale of drugs in the modern world.

The extent of the black economy and the massive potential gains in tax suggest that legalisation of narcotics may be a good way forward although the damage done by these substances cannot be underestimated.  It is also important to note that there is no such thing as 'fair trade' cocaine.  People who buy and use cocaine are partially paying for murder.

Legalisation, taxation and careful regulation are surely the way forward.

The Pixies at the Kelvingrove Bandstand, Glasgow

I started listening to the Pixies in 1991 or 1992 around the time that they broke up.  I initially heard Doolittle on tape, borrowed from the library in East Kilbride.  A neighbour gave me a copy of Trompe Le Monde and I bought a second hand copy of Surfer Rosa, looking for Big Black style Albini kicks.

They didn't click with me immediately.  I got the REM and Velvets references on 'Here comes your man' but it took a while to fall in love with them. Eventually I got there.

I first saw them live in 2004 at T in the Park and since then I've seen them in the SECC and at Primavera in Barcelona.  Generally they deliver and I was keen to see them again at the Kelvingrove Bandstand which is a great venue and usually ned free.  Sadly there was a bit of a ned problem last night which is often an issue in Glasgow.  Drunken twats are like scabies in Glasgow and I encountered one last night.

The pixies played a great 31 song set, starting with 'where is my mind?' and including 'wintering', 'caribou', 'nimrod's son', 'broken face', 'wave of mutilation', 'here comes your man', 'gouge away', 'planet of sound' and 'debaser'. They also played a bunch of new stuff I didn't recognise.  They were tight and the new bass player did well.  We also bumped into a bunch of pals which was nice.

Sadly our personal space was invaded by a drunken twat who thinks it is ok to be verbally aggressive to women.  Another concert goer was wearing a 'rudimentary peni' t-shirt and on reflection, I feel that it should be gifted to that drunken idiot as a warning to the general public.  After some razor sharp with and repartee, we left the venue during the last song to avoid me getting my ass kicked by the aforementioned intoxicated misogynist.  We listened to the encore of 'into the white' from the car feeling sorry for anyone who needs to interact with that dude on a regular basis.

The pixies were good and assholes are, sadly, everywhere.  Even at pixies concerts.  If wankers could fly we would never see the sky.

Minimum alcohol pricing may well make Scotland a better place.

This blog is now 12 years old

I started writing this blog in Coventry in 2005.  I am now writing it in Glasgow in 2017.  I am older and the world has changed in some ways.  It's always difficult to say if things are better or worse.  Back then we had terrorism in London and a government that was doing things I don't like.  Right now we still have a government doing things I don't like.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

In 12 years I have managed to do a lot of stuff.  In 1999 or 2000 I decided that I wanted to do some stuff and now I have almost done everything on that list.  I do not see myself as career orientated but I have managed to get myself where I want to be.  Beyond that, I have found a great partner and I've been with her for a couple of years now.  I hope that we will achieve a lot of other stuff together in the future.

I was talking with my partner last night.  We both wish we were 25 physically but we both enjoy the stuff that maturity brings you.  Experience helps you deal with life.  Life does get better in a lot of ways when you get older, if you are lucky.  As always I see myself as lucky.

Sometimes one contemplates the future.  We look at our parents and we see what has happened to our parents and we are scared.  We don't want the same stuff to happen to us but we know it might.  It is important to remember that our parents are a lot older than us and that our futures, if we are lucky, may not be written in our genes.  I don't think I would ever want to know my future.  If a blood test could predict my future I would not want that blood test.  There can be a freedom in not knowing the future.

Now that I'm older I like the sun more.  I crave daylight and sun.  I crave green places and the outdoors.  I like watching the sea.  Sometimes I even like rain.  In Scotland we never get much sun.  I am lucky that I have been able to see so much of the world.  I hope that stupid politicians do not stop the younger generations from seeing as much of the world as I have.

Next week I'm going to see some sun.  If I'm lucky I might even see some whales.

Is medicine in the UK fucked?

Why would a smart school kid want to be a doctor?

I didn't work hard at school.  I wasn't interested.  I was more interested in music and comic books and having fun.  Eventually I grew up, decided I wanted to do something worthwhile for society and my community and decided I wanted to be a doctor.  I wanted to help people.  So, at the age of 23, more than 15 years ago, I went to medical school.

Unfortunately I never had rich parents.  Both my parents had jobs.  Jobs working for the state where they worked hard but they were never paid very much.  Now I probably earn more than my parents did when their salaries were combined.  However at medical school I had no money.  My parents didn't have much spare to give me although they gave me what they could.  I got bank loans, overdrafts, hardship loans and hardship fund awards.  I managed to pay my rent and eat and get through medical school and become a doctor.  When I graduated at the age of 26 I was about £40,000 in debt.  It took me seven years to pay that back.

Being a doctor isn't cheap.  You give the GMC money, you give the BMA money (if you want), you pay to sit expensive exams (sometimes more than £1000), you pay your Royal College money (to train and to be a member), you pay your medical insurance and finally you pay a big chunk of money to be on the GP register or the consultant register.  Also, you get a small study leave budget so you pay a fuck load of cash to attend course, buy textbooks, buy equipment and make yourself good enough to do the job.

Also, you damage your personal life.  You travel about.  I've lived and worked in lots of cities and towns.  I've spent 3 and a half years as a doctor mainly living in hospital rooms.  I've slept on the floor at work when I'm meant to be oncall for emergency work (from home) but I don't have a car and I don't trust a taxi to get me into hospital quickly enough for a patient who needs me.  You miss time with family and friends.  You don't spend enough time on relationships.  You blink and you're nearly fucking 40.

So why do you do it?  You do it to help someone.  You might stop them dying.  You might get them out of ITU.  You might stop them becoming disabled.  You might help control their pain or their inconvenient chronic disease.  You might help.  Because you want to help people.  Because you are a doctor.

You are a doctor 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for the rest of your fucking life until you get to stop being a doctor.  You realise that life is precious and wafer thin.  You know that sometimes you can help and sometimes you can't.  You always hope that you won't be the only doctor on a plane (and that the other doctor is an anaesthetist and not a public health consultant).

So being a doctor is tough but you do it because it's a part of you.  The NHS is a useless monolith sometimes but it helps everyone without asking questions.  It is a privilege to be able to treat every patient without worrying about costs so I guess the monolith is worthwhile.

All this is fine and good but it's becoming more and more unpleasant being a doctor in the UK.  The current rich kid clown show of neoliberal Tory twats that is molesting this country has decided to fuck with the medical profession.  They have picked notorious fud-nugget Jeremy Hunt as their frontman for this project and he is trolling the doctors in England in a massive way.  He is aiming at a reduction in take home, spendable pay for junior doctors of approximately a third.  He is claiming that this is a pay rise and that doctors need to work seven days a week.  He's like a Bizzaro version of a health secretary from a Superman comic. Backwards and fucked up.

Nowadays medical students often have debts of about £70,000 when they graduate.  If they get paid less they won't break even till they are in their 40s.  Hard work and no money makes you miserable.  Why would a smart school kid want to be a doctor in the UK?

We won't have the best and the brightest as doctors if there is no obvious reward.  The job is horrible. It will only be worse if you don't get a comfortable wage.  Smart kids will do something easier that pays more.  They'll work in finance.  Talent will be lost.

Medicine in the UK is probably fucked.  The NHS will probably be dragged down with the medical profession.  Jeremy Hunt will laugh all the way to the bank.

Happy happy, joy joy.

Glasgow Central Station tour

I had been wanting to go on the Glasgow Central Station tour, led by Paul Lyons, for some time.  I managed to get a space on it today and I was not disappointed.  As someone who was born in Glasgow but grew up in one of the satellite suburbs to the south of the city Central Station has always been an important hub in my life, a gateway to adventure and culture.

The building itself is massive, truly much bigger than I ever really realise.  To get a true picture of its extent you need to see it from above.  It is a giant footprint on Glasgow, extending north from the Clyde.  It was build on top of an old village and even now hundreds of people work in the station and thousands more commute through it every day.

This tour gives you a chance to see behind the scenes at this important building.  You get into some of the nooks and crannies of the station and you learn about it’s construction and evolution as well as its central role in the social history of both Glasgow and Scotland itself.  Paul Lyons is a great speaker and he tells us of the massive crowds drawn here is yesteryear by the famous names of the past.  He also reminds us of those who were sadly unnamed as they passed though the station during the tragic final years of the first world war.

I could go on and on about the things I learned from Paul today but that is not really my role.  These stories should be told by Paul on the tour and at some point they will hopefully be written down and further recorded by him.

For everyone else, until that point, go on this tour.  You will not be disappointed.

The Glasgow Central Station Tour website

Bad stuff can happen at any time

We often think we are bulletproof.  We think that bad stuff can happen to us.  We live comfortable lives in nice places.  Nobody shoots at us.  Most of the time we are safe.  We are still relatively young.  Plenty of time to just keep your head down and work.  Save money for the future.  Live for the future.

It sounds nice, doesn't it.

It's not always true.  August has in many ways been a month of bad stuff.  None of it, I hasten to add, has affected me personally, directly.  I've personally not had anything bad happen to me although some things have brought life into a greater clarity.

So this month one of my colleagues, who is a couple of years younger than me (early-mid-thirties) has been diagnosed with breast cancer.  She has two young daughters, her parents live on the other side of the world, her husband hasn't got a job right now.  It's not the worst possible scenario medically but it's not good.  The future is uncertain.  She's so young.  Her family is younger.

Earlier in the week I had attended the funeral of the mother of a close friend.  She was relatively young but she had lived a good, complete life.  She met 3 of her grandchildren and had many good things in life.  Her children and her husband were with her as she died at home.  That was good.

In addition to these two stories I was also saddened to hear of the death of the teenage son of two very nice colleagues.  The poor bloke, who I had met once, had been ill for some time.  Expected but still unspeakably sad.

This might all sound like a torrent of misery but it shouldn't be.  I guess the point of this bit of writing is to say that you should live for just now.  Live your life as fully as you can all the time.  Plan for the future but do not bet your life on the future.  Life is short and transient so it is important to have as good a time as possible while you are alive.  Take sensible chances and if you are in a situation you don't want to be in, change it.

I'm a lucky bloke.  I've got a great life.  I'm well paid, I enjoy my job (sort of), I have a decent flat and I get to do what I want to do most of the time.  I realise a lot of people are not as lucky as I am.  Sometimes it's good to just sit back and think about how good things are.

So, carpe diem everyone.  Just be nice to everyone else while you do it,

Different experiences

One of my friends came out to me yesterday.  I've known him for about 8 years and I never suspected that he was gay.  He said that he had come to terms with it a couple of years ago and that he was slowly telling his friends.  He's living away from home at the moment so it had actually been a while since I'd seen him.  He seems to be a bit more comfortable with himself now.  He comes from a fairly religious background and his religion sometimes struggles with homosexuality.  He tells me that he still has religious faith but he feels a bit distanced from the church he grew up with.

It's good to know that your friends trust you enough to tell you stuff like that.  He said that he knew I wouldn't be freaked out and when I asked him he reassured me that I had never said anything horribly homophobic to him (not that I am in the habit of saying horribly homophobic things, but being from the West coast of Scotland words such as 'fuck' and 'cunt' are often used as commas and you worry about using the term 'gay' as an adjective). 

I know a few gay folk but most of them had established 'gay' identities when I met them or were very obviously gay.  When I think back to the conversations that my friend and I have had over the years about women and relationships I guess that his perspective must have been very different to mine.  At least he feels he can be totally open now (although I really don't want to know what he does on certain sexuality-orientated websites).

A lot of artists and musicians that I admire are gay.  Bob Mould had perhaps not been the most admirable person at times (when dealing with ex-bandmates) but he writes well about his sexuality in his autobiography and that book is worth reading for the insight that it gives the heterosexual reader.  At the end of the day, people are people, and people can love anyone they want as long as nobody gets hurt. 

Adventures in bin-raking

I'm staying at my parents house for a couple of days.  I haven't been out here since Christmase so it's noce to catch up with them a bit.  I've also been tidying out my old room at their house and getting rid of some of the crap that's still cluttering the place.

I went to the local dump with my mother this afternoon.  My mother likes a bargin and keeps her eyes open for useful things whenever she goes to the dump.  We were fairly lucky today.  At the top of the dump was a pile of about 30 CDs and DVDs.  It looked as if somebody had thrown out someone elses possessions.  The collection looked rather female in origin and contained a lot of stuff by the likes of Michael Buble and Jess Stone.  There was also a few Beatles CDs and stuff by Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, Miles Davis and BoB Dylan.  Randomly there was also a copy of 'the last time I did acid I went insane' by Jeffrey Lewis.  I promptly jumped into the dump and salvaged all this booty.  As a family we are not proud.  I even found a copy of Johnny Cash 'American 5' for my Dad (I own this one already but my Dad is a Cash fan too).  We also picked up the first series of the Wire and a couple of books.

At the end of the day we figured out that the collection of stuff was probably worth about £150.  Not bad for stuff that was due to be landfill.  The stuff that we don't want for ourselves will be donated to charity shops with some of the other stuff we were getting rid of.

My parents and I are not poor.  I have a good job and they have decent pensions.  However it does sicken me to see useful stuff condemed to landfill when it could be used by someone else.  My Dad will enjoy watching Finding Nemo and the Wire and my Mum will enjoy listening to Elton John (hopefully when I'm out of earshot).  I'm happy with my free stuff too.

So, if you go to the dump - keep your eyes open.  And if you are going to dump stuff maybe think if someone else could use it.  We suspect that all this stuff was thrown out by an idiot in a fit of anger which is sort of sad but hopefully the charity shop may be able to do something useful with it.

Simon Singh wins libel case

'I'm gonna sue you! I'll sue you in England!' - 'Tom Cruise' in South Park - The closet episode

British libel laws are draconian. British people don't really have freedom of speech or a free press. If you want to say something that a rich person disagrees with (even if it's just daft stuff about famous people) it is very easy for them to bankrupt you in an English court.

Laughing at famous people is one thing but these libel laws become very problematic when they are used to suppress scientific discourse. Simon Singh, a respected popular science writer, wrote about several non-evidence-based claims that some chiropractors had made. The British Chiropractic Association then sued him for libel. They could have bankrupted them.

Thankfully the nefarious ploy of the BCA backfired. Anti-libel campaigners systematically reported British chiropractors to advertising watchdogs resulting in numerous fines for BCA members (who became slightly dischuffed with the BCA). On the 1st of April a sensible judge kicked the BCA libel case out of court and Singh walked free. A victory for common sense, science and freedom of speech.

I was fairly happy.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8598472.stm

Homeopathy is pish

I'm sure most people realise that homeopathy is pure bollocks. As I passed though Central Station in Glasgow yesterday I saw an anti-homeopathy protest group. They were planning to take a mass-overdose of homeopathic medications to prove that these medicines have no effect.

Pretty cool idea.

You may think that all this homeopathy stuff is harmless but apparently the NHS spends £4million on this useless shite every year. That's £4million of my tax money. Bastards. I also object to private companies making a profit from the misery of people who don't know that they are being ripped off.

http://www.1023.org.uk/the-1023-overdose-event.php