Over breakfast I watched
an episode of Babylon 5. It was the episode I'd put on twice last
night; I'd tried watching it only to fall asleep. And when I woke to
see the end credits rolling I then put it on again only to fall
asleep again. I hate that - I kept nodding off in front of the telly
when I wanted to be awake, and was then wide awake at 2.45am this
morning.
I finally got the episode
watched on the third attempt this morning. It would have been nice to
have had Furry Face for company over brekkie today, but he had
sneaked upstairs (when he thought I wasn't watching) to sleep at the
foot of the bed, and I didn't have the heart to fetch him back.
As I drove to work the
radio was all a-buzz with the latest scandal about the new Pope. The
last Pope was allegedly a Nazi sympathiser. This one apparently had
ties with the military Junta which ruled Argentina in years gone by.
I have no idea whether he really had any such connection or not;
after all, this was all half a lifetime ago. I suspect it is all a
ruse to sell more newspapers.
Talking of which I hear
that several of the country's leading newspapers have decided to have
nothing to do with the Government's recently set-up watchdog. They
aren't keen about its remit to monitor exactly what
they are spouting.
I would have thought that
such a legally-established watchdog would have power over the press,
and that the various tabloids wouldn't be able to opt in or out as
the mood took them, but what do I know? Apparently legal advice is
being taken, and there is a school of thought that the recently
passed legislation is applicable to bloggers like "Yours
Truly" but not to the national press.
Meanwhile Ken Barlow (out
of "Coronation Street") would seem to have gone
completely mad. He's said in an interview with New Zealand News that
anyone who's been molested by a celebrity paedophile has got all that
they deserved because of their sins
in a previous life.
An interesting point of
view. It amazes me that in an open and free society we are supposed
to respect the rights of nut-cases to spout such patent nonsense.
To work where we had a
visitor. Someone with whom I used to work some thirty years ago. It
was good to catch up and reminisce about old times. And then having
done my bit at work my piss boiled as I listened to the
radio on the way home.
There have been failings
in various hospitals across the country. Sometimes quite serious.
Occasionally potentially fatal. But hospitals are run by human
beings. We fail from time to time. It's what we do. No one working in
a hospital environment ever fails deliberately. And does it really
help anyone by publicly pillorying medical professionals in the press
when they have made a mistake? The realisation of having made such a
mistake is horror enough without hounding these people in the tabloid
press.
Could you imagine how you
might feel having made an honest mistake which might have killed
someone; and then having lived with the guilt of such a mistake for
over a year before finally finding yourself in the dock being stared
at by tabloid journalists who are treating your trial as some form of
cheap entertainment?
I enjoyed my curly-wurly
as I drove home. It would have been good to have gone to the Tuesday
gathering, but I wouldn't have got there until nearly 9pm; it's not
fair to expect everyone to wait for me. Instead I went straight home
and took Furry Face round the block. He likes that, and he seems to
be far more friendly with the Shetland ponies that live round the
corner than he ever used to be. Perhaps he's mellowing with age...
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