NHS managers

Read it and weep: a list of managers at an NHS primary healthcare trust. 

This is what happens when things are run by bureaucrats.

Urine tests for welfare recipients

From a reader:

I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In order to earn that pay cheque, I work on a cruise ship for a major shipping line. For the safety of all the passengers and the crew with whom I work, I am required to pass a random urine test, with which I have no problem.

What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test. Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare cheque because I have to pass one to earn it for them?

Please understand that I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the other hand, have a problem with helping someone sit on their ass drinking beer and smoking dope and making babies, that they do not want, cannot feed nor look after properly. Could you imagine how much money the government would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a benefits cheque?

Another fine mess you've got me into

Struggling to make ends meet? Worried about your job? Well I've got some bad news for you. Having just had the pleasure of being forced to bail out most of Britain's banks, it now looks like the European colleagues are going to relieve you of a whole lot more money, this time to subsidise a completely different set of impecunious barrow boys in suits.

Iceland will be put on a fast track to joining the European Union to rescue the small Arctic state from financial collapse amid rising expectations that it will apply for membership within months, senior policy-makers in Brussels and Reykjavik have told the Guardian.

And that means just one thing. You are going to be filling in the hole in the Icelandic accounts. Remember that when your employer goes bust.

Do your volunteering overseas

The Independent says that VSO are receiving record numbers of applications, apparently giving the lie to my theory that CRB checks are destroying volunteering in the UK.

Except that when I search for CRB on the VSO website I get nothing, and when I search for VSO on the CRB website I get nothing either. It looks as if CRB checks are not required for VSO applicants.

Does this mean that everyone is going their public service in other countries now?

The ice storm that wasn't

EU Referendum: Why would the Telegraph report a heatwave that killed 19 people in Australia, but not an ice storm that killed 42 in the USA?

The BBC and the WMO seem to have missed the ice storm too. Funny that.

There was also a snowstorm in the United Arab Emirates, which I haven't seen reported over here.

More crime prevention

In days gone by, they dealt more firmly with bureaucratsThe Magistrate is irritated by having to complete a Criminal Records Bureau check so that he can volunteer for a charity. He is a JP of twenty years' standing.

This is another example of the madness of crime prevention. In order to prevent a couple of crimes a year, we take a major step towards the destruction of volunteering in the UK. The bureaucracy expands and swells and only harm comes of it.

Of course the government's solution to this will be to increase funding to the fake charities that can't get people to volunteer for them any longer, and the cycle of sovietisation and despair will spiral on downwards.

It will end in tears, I tell you.

Escape to Santiago

The idea that the whole world is going to hell in a handcart is pretty much universal right now. Brown has lost the plot, Obama is going to copy him and hose the economy down with stolen cash, the protectionist barriers are going up around the world.

There's no escape.

Or perhaps there is. According to the Wall Street Journal, things are looking up in South America, where much of the continent is quietly being transformed from banana republic to stable democracy. The media here may drool over the student-revolutionary-friendly antics of Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega, but these are the exceptions rather than the rule.

Most of Latin America is [...] undergoing a period of unprecedented political and economic transformation. In Chile, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panama, the Dominican Republic and, yes, Mexico -- which is most decidedly not a failing state -- there has been a quiet but substantial movement toward the creation of societies that are characterized by increased economic opportunity, social mobility and political democracy.

Chile sounds pretty good to me. And they have wine and beaches too. What's not to like?

Image of a woman being wheeled to hell in a handcart by Sacred Destinations.