I found all this in my "working file" and realised you hadnt had the joy of it so here it is in all its glory - I keep saying I will do this more frequently but never seem to manage it. Actually what I really need to do is give you some of it and the rest at an even later date and I need to start a new "working file" as more seems to end up in there than ends up on here...
August 19th
So long, no action. This is primarily due to laziness but also a result of busy-ness. The books I have long since been recording on the “visual bookshelf” element of Facebook, so have no need to record them here. This leaves this area free for my own brand of spit and vitriol.
Yes I am still sick of no-money-dossers. Having explained to one particular idiot this afternoon that I would have put their dog to sleep rather than run up a £700 bill if they had told me, they asked me if I was serious? Of course I was I replied, if that is all you can afford then that is all you will get. I also pointed out that I would really rather have not spent hours pissing about with their dog and making it better if I was not going to be paid. Hopefully some cash will be forthcoming but I am not optimistic.
The computer engineer has been here all day and we have a new server. Rather unusually everything seems to be working fine and I rather think it will remain so. I hope to finish painting the laundry floor tonight. This was a major job over the weekend and I am looking forward to finishing it off.
On top of all the other things a rather nasty feral cat bit a quarter of the nail off my left index finger this morning and this necessitated a trip to A&E to make sure I had adequate antibiotic cover. Scrubbing up is going to be murder for the next while. The offending cat is now frozen.
The laptop suffered a major system crash last week and had to have a complete reinstall of Windows. Fortunately my data was all up to date and I only backed-up 2 hours prior to the crash. Not quite the major issue we had last time but still pretty annoying.
30th September 2008
Don’t seem to be able to get the hang of this at all - I have not touched this document for over a month, but have been active all over various forums on the internet.
These forums provide a modicum of interest but sometimes all they do is wind me up.
The MSE forum is full of people who should never have been allowed access to the internet, being too thick to fully comprehend the topics on which they are passing comment. “Daily Mail” rules OK I fear. If places such as these are representative of the population as a whole then we can be sure and safe in the knowledge that intelligence is firmly in the hands of a very small minority.
The RCVS forum is dominated by one individual and as such appears to be a way of him foisting his ideas and views upon a larger group than he would normally have access to. It is therefore nearly as narrow in viewpoint as the body it seeks to vilify (the RCVS).
The Facebook group “Stupid things pet owners say to vets and vet nurses” suffers from a similar lack of perspective.
All of these provide diversion but I think I will attempt to stop spending time with them. I shall rejuvenate my self posting here and reconnect with the real world.
Facebook itself does at least provide connections with people I know in real life, but could border on obsession.
Things move on and so do I.
But….. Muddled thinking appears to be the norm these days. A recent oration by an itinerant preacher was a good case in point. I am sure the congregation lapped it up but using “child abuse” as a shock tactic to get his point across was a very low point. His kind of vitriol gives the secularists all they need to wage a successful battle against organised religion. I am sure his types are preaching the length and breadth of this land but I for one would like to see the death of this “fundie” claptrap. His view that it was almost “child abuse” to give children the “stories” from the Bible without the “truth” of the gospel and without “bringing them to Jesus”, was a very poor show. I could see a counter jibe at Prof. Dawkins equally vacuous “child abuse” argument but it was pointed out to me that he may not have been intelligent enough to have worked this out and it was more likely an attack on the creeping secularisation of religious teaching in schools. If so then it was an attack from an ill-informed viewpoint and just as valid as anything the “Daily Mail” would concoct.
October 6th
A very depressing day; but at least it was dry. I am absolutely sick to the back teeth of seemingly endless discussions which have only one single root – money or more accurately; lack of money. I want to tell all these people to “sod off” and go and bother someone else, but this would only create further difficulties. I had every single damn variation of the Pet-Aid discussion.
One client claimed that she now owned the dog (as opposed to the actual owner who was presenting the dog) so that she could attempt to use her PetAid certificate for the patient. This was because the patient was suffering from a severe skin disease which would require a lot of intervention (and cost). The dog had been taken on by a young woman in full knowledge of all its various ailments and she had already failed to return the dog to us for assessment of its progress after the previous examination some 2 months ago. The dog is now necessarily so much worse and has been left to deteriorate to such an extent that recovery may be very hard indeed.
It got worse, it really did. Another new patient was presented requiring surgical intervention and I just knew from the outset that we were going to run into trouble with the financial aspects. On explaining that the cost would be £250 the client calmly asked “how is that going to affect me financially?”. That bears no further scrutiny.
My business manager presented me with an unpaid bill for sorting out the boiler. This bill in itself was not unreasonable but my business partner had asked for a “breakdown” of the labour charge. This had not been forthcoming from the heating engineer and we had not been able to make contact with him to ask for this and he had not returned our calls. On close reading of the bill it seemed quite obvious to me what the labour charge was for and I felt that it was well explained. I really don’t know what my business partner was expecting but I suspect that he just didn’t fancy paying the bill. I struggle to keep going with this person, and am at a loss to know what to do. I suspect my only option is to “walk away” but I don’t think I am quite in a position to be able to do this just yet.
The staff are also suffering quite a lot at the moment, primarily due to the shortage in staff. We lost a full time nurse in July and a part time assistant in September and these were in addition to the member of staff who has been on maternity leave for the last year. This is compounded by holidays and training. This is not helped by those who fail to read their rota and not turn up until much later than they should.
I also had another prescription request. I find it very hard to believe that the profession quietly acquiesced to this legislation. Either we don’t care that much or we are all far too law abiding for our own good. I managed to get the client to take enough medication to cover the remainder of this month until I can at least charge them for the privilege of writing the script. I now realise that I have not given her enough of one of the medications and I will almost certainly need to provide them with their requested script FOC in this case. It is, of course, fairly obvious that the charging period will be finite. At the end of this period we can, at best, expect regulation of the costs and at worst a reintroduction of the demand to allow free scripts. I would wish that at least one member would stick their head above the parapet and demand a charge from someone during the “no charge” period. I guess that I now have this opportunity (see above), but am probably way too “chicken” to actually do it.
We also have the ongoing 24/7 working issue. This is causing much discussion within the profession, as the RCVS is currently giving it some hard thought. The MRCVS discussion group provides a lively debating forum but I feel that some of the ire directed at the RCVS is unfounded. In this case it would be useful to identify what or who they think the “RCVS” is/are. I think the RCVS is not some large faceless organisation; it is the sum of its members and the council they have elected to help with progress in the decision making and policy direction. The employees (such as they are) of the RCVS are merely acting at the council’s direction. Therefore to what or whom are we directing our comment? The logical conclusion of this is that we are directing it at ourselves! In this case we could therefore be held to be “navel gazing”. Perhaps we are directing our comment at the legislation and charter which hold our college together. In this case we would be urinating into the wind as these show no realistic chance of being changed in the near future.
With respect to the 24/7 issue, I really can’t decide where my sympathies lie. I think I would agree with an opening to deregulation in this area: to let the “market forces decide”. I would also like to see a removal of the obligation to make a home visit “on demand”, although on careful reading of the GTPC, it would appear that a refusal backed by a rational and recorded thought process is more than adequate to satisfy the DC.
I despise being coerced into seeing patients, where I have no realistic chance of being paid. I despise the chance of being woken at any time of the night and the stress that this causes. The RCVS council would do well to actually recognise the stresses that these obligations place upon the profession. This of course being a profession where suicide and drink/drug problems are flagged up as very real issues.
The good news was that the results of the Coniston Trail race came through and I managed a place of 104 out of 298 in a time of 55minutes. Given that this was an 11km course and much more suited to the road racers, I am quite happy. 600 had entered for the race but the weather on Saturday had probably put an awful lot of competitors off. The ground was extremely wet underfoot and there were streams to cross and distinctly muddy ground. I had worried that I might have some problems leaving the carpark, as this too was quite filthy. I moved the car from its original parking place as I was at very real risk of sinking deeper into the mire.
October 7th
Have to take the car to the garage once again, as its electrical innards are playing up once again. This is hard on the heels of its previous sensor problem only a few weeks ago. I guess that we are facing a new car sooner or later but that this is the price of running a 6yo vehicle.
October 31st
I wrote a whole load of stuff in this document last night but it has all disappeared – very annoying.
(Update 22nd Feb 09 – I know where it went now – all in the blog posted – cut/paste instead of copy/paste – now there will be duplication – ha ha!)
The rest over the next few days - buena suerte mis amigos
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