12 July 2012 (Thursday) - Care Records

A rather restless night - I was awoken at least once every half hour by a tinny electronic bleeping sound. I blamed "er indoors ^TM" phone (as it has a track record of having done that before) but apparently the device was innocent. Or so counsel for the defence claimed.

It turned out that the bleeping was the battery going flat on another phone. A shame the battery couldn't have gone flatter quicker. I spent much of today feeling quite exhausted.

There was something interesting on the radio as I drove to work today. It would seem that Ministry of Defence officials had briefed Tony Blair (When he was Prime Minister) about the UFO sightings in the UK. Apparently there were sightings at Chelsea FC's football pitch and there were aliens in hotels in South Wales and in Lincolnshire. UFOs were reported by RAF Air Commodores and by the Royal Naval ships sent off to kick the Argies out of the Falklands.

I wonder if Tony Blair took these reports seriously - it was quite clear that the chap on the radio this morning didn't.

Talking of not taking things seriously, I phoned my G.P. today to make an appointment (my guts aren't what they might be). I was told that they don't book appointments any more. I just have to phone up at 8am tomorrow and hope that I can get seen that morning. If I can't, then I might like to try my luck the day after, or the day after that. And just keep trying until I eventually get seen. Or die of whatever's making me crap blood.

And talking of my G.P. surgery, I received a letter from them the other day. I was given the chance to opt out of the National Care Record scheme. There are moves afoot to make my medical records available to any hospital in the country which might need them. This would have been particularly useful over the last few kite festivals when I've taken broken offspring to nearby hospitals who (because we live out of their area) had never heard of her. Under the proposed scheme the hospital would have had instant access to all relevant medical information.

However due to Health-and-Safety-Human-Rights-Lefty-Crackpotism we have the choice to opt out of this scheme. At first sight opting out would seem to be patently stupid. It makes such sense to be part of such a scheme. And writing to fifty-odd million people to give them the chance to opt out would have cost a fortune.

But it turns out that there is a lot more to this scheme than meets the eye. Who exactly can call up your data? And exactly what data can they call up? It would seem that there are all sorts of problems with the security of the data; so much so that private companies might even be able to legitimately use this database to access your ex-directory phone numbers.

I hate researching stuff like this. What started off as a clear-cut rant against anyone who would be so stupid as to opt out of what is so obviously a good idea has got me seriously considering opting out of a good idea so that I don't have to answer my telephone twenty times a day to people trying to sell me stuff I don't want.