Another restless night; I
shall have to steer clear of these all-you-can-eat buffets in future.
Rather than laying in bed with stomach ache I decided to get up and
have stomach ache instead. A brekkie of coffee and toast went some
way to settling things.
As I scoffed I watched an
episode of "Dad's Army" which the SkyPlus box had
thoughtfully recorded over the weekend. Much as I quite llike that
show I'm coming to the conclusion that it would have been a lot
better if it had not had Clive Dunn as Corporal Jones in the cast.
There is a limit to how many times that they don't like it up 'em.
It was rather cold as I
left home this morning. For the first time this year I had to scrape
ice off of my car. That means that winter has officially arrived.
As I drove I listened to
the radio. And I got just the teensiest bit wound up. Apparently
hospitals are now not allowed to pay the extortionate fees that locum
agencies charge for staff. Payments
to agencies will be capped. At first sight this seems a sensible
idea because these payments cost the NHS a fortune. However the NHS
needs locum workers because it can't fill the vacancies it has. Jobs
are advertised; no one applies for them. And so agency workers are
used to do the jobs that demonstrably no one else wants to do. And
these locum workers are (in large part) coming from overseas
attracted by the good money. But this money is not going to be there
any more. If the money isn't offered then people won't travel half
way round the world. And so there vacancies won't be filled.
The obvious solution is
to pay a wage that attracts staff in the first place. Why should
someone study for five years to attain a post in a hospital which
only pays half the wage a trainee train driver gets after six months.
There was also an
interview with Ed Milliband (the previous leader of the Labour
party). He seemed to appear to be very good in that he didn't run
down Jeremy Corbyn in any way. But he was strangely silent when asked
to comment about how the Labour party is effectively dead in the
water.
He was also rather
non-committal when it was mentioned that he's apparently said to his
critics “I bet you didn’t think things
would actually get worse”.
The Labour party annoys
me. they could do so much better.
Last week I mentioned
about having a vague plan to fill my geo-calendar. Today was a date
on which I'd not previously logged a find, and so locating a sandwich
box was on the cards for something to do before work.
According to the geo-map
there was a large cache hidden not very far from work so once I'd
visited Morrisons I went for a look-see. According to the
instructions on-line the cache was near (but not in) an old
derelict shed. As I walked up to the shed I saw a large plastic box
with an "Official Geocache" sticker. This box was
laying upside down in the middle of a field. I collected it, and
followed my GPS to where the cache was supposed to be. The lid and
cache contents were strewn around the area. It had obviously been
deliberately trashed. Bearing in mind that the nearby derelict shed
was exactly the sort of place where I would play when a youngster I
can't help but think that kids have found it and wrecked it.
I went on to work and did
my bit. And then came home again. The evening wasn't quite as cold as
the morning had been, for which I was grateful.
Steve and Sarah delivered
chocolate (which was to be encouraged), and then "er
indoors TM" went bowling. I ironed shirts
and spent a little longer fiddling with my new Wherigo...
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