2009 — 2 October: Friday
A pleasant evening of music and reading. It's a long time since I've played Al Stewart's "Past, present and future" — an album from 1974 that was one of the first ones I played to Christa in the Old Windsor vicarage. (Its main track briefly sparked my interest in Nostradamus.) So to tonight's picture of that fine lady:
This time, from a mere 29 years ago. And suddenly it's 00:59. Yawn. G'night.
Medicine balls, indeed
Is anybody really surprised that the quality monitoring of the out-of-hours GP services has concentrated (that is, superficially) on the timeliness of call answering rather than assessing the medical care actually delivered?
The BBC has just picked on what sounds like the same fatality that "Private Eye" highlighted, caused (one assumes) by a poor grasp of the English language still largely employed in this country by the hapless doctor Daniel Obani1 from Germany (who had previously failed his language test in Leeds, but had joined the Cornwall GP list — perhaps because no language test was required). At £150 per hour, who can blame him? But in the "Quality" business, people tend to choose as Key Indicators to measure what they can easily measure, and then (of course) the people being measured tend to pay ever more attention to what is being measured as their rewards generally come to depend on it. Hence the pear-shaped results.
SATS, anyone?
I find myself torn between these two (almost equally ridiculous) BBC stories: #1 and #2. Must be time for breakfast.
Time for tea
Supplies have been gathered in. Emails answered. Lunch munched. Another box of stuff from the loft will shortly be heading for the tip. I've even done a survey on the recent car service though I admit I have yet to post the thing. And now, somehow, it's nearly time for the "News Quiz". The news remains almost too bizarre for words, of course.
Tonight's video entertainment
A DVD that showed up a couple of days ago. It's on a par with "In Bruges" if that means anything...
Now (21:38) back to the previous task. (By the way, Big Bro, sending me a picture of a plane decked out with the Sultan [or whatever] of Brunei's colours etc doesn't actually constitute proof that you're in that country, you know.)