langlounge

hilili Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hi All > I work as a Cancer Advisor, within a Cancer > Support Organisation. Currently we are finding > that more and more patients are having > difficulties attending appointments for essential > treatment due to travel costs. We are very lucky > to have hospital transport but it often means > patients waiting around for many hours which > doesn't help with their fatigue, also some > patients are happy to continue being independent > for as long as possible. I was thinking that if we > had a designated newsagents in our community > perhaps residents would pop in with one or two > pounds which would help top up our patients Oyster > Cards. This will hopefully be short term as I am > talking to TFL for a permanent solution to this > problem. Any thoughts or opinions will be > appreciated. Thanks Hilili Don't you advise cancer patients to apply for a Freedom Pass? Cancer is recognised as a disability and anyone who has cancer and is suffering from fatigue that makes waiting for and having to stand on, public transport, certainly used to be eligible for a Freedom Pass. This would give them free travel on buses and the underground and most of the overground at all times, plus free rail travel after 09:30. Have the rules been changed for Freedom Passes so they couldn't get one?

first mate Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Sadly, I was slightly put off signing that > petition because one has to give an email and > agree for info to be stored and updates sent > etc.... Shame one couldn't just give a name and > postcode without the obligatory database attached. There comes a point when you have to take a stand though first mate, and soon you we will have lost our chance to do that. At least those people are organising to save health care for the ordinary person - I do take an interest, and am glad for the pointer to this, it is the first clear and accessible means I have seen of getting involved to do that. I really don't know how anyone can be daft enough to believe the NHS is being sold off to any greedy thug that can bid, as the end result of someone wanting to "improve" it. The NHS is being broken up and sold off because super rich companies and investors identified the UK as a place where no money was being screwed out of the sick and their desperate families, and set about working on how they could create a market to profit from us. How did we become so stupid, so staggeringly thick and brainless, as a country, that we can fall for this, and so lazy and cowardly that we can let them get away with it?

Thank you very much for this Borderlands. Of all the stupidities I have seen in my lifetime, the way we are letting the NHS be stolen from under our noses by marauding bandits, is the most dizzying stupidity of all. As far as I know.....we are the only people in history to sell ourselves back into serfdom, aren't we? Is there really no one who remembers their grandparents' terror of being ill? For anyone who doesn't know what it's going to be like for most people once the City of London and their chums have sold the NHS down the river, I have a middle class US friend, from Texas, she and her husband ran their own very successful business for years. They vote Republican. Now she needs a transplant. Their business has declined after her husband had a coronary, and she no longer has health insurance that will pay for the transplant. They don't want to have to sell their house, which is the only source of funds they have left, so she is asking everyone she knows in the UK if she can time it until her liver is failing, and then turn up here at an NHS hospital.

If Councils in London are going to keep offering people the option to be buried, the choice is either to reuse existing graveyards (something which has always happened in English history, happens in every other urban area in the world, and in the UK) or - and this bonkers idea has been unique to Southwark - start turning the few remaining urban public parks into graveyards. Southwark has been unique, over the last 40 years of so, of having a vociferous group of individuals who were distorting the policy on burial, by objecting to any reuse of the existing cemeteries. Parts of Nunhead Cemetery and Camberwell Old Cemetery were destined to be carefully reused following a comprehensive survey of those sites in the 1970s. A small group of graveyard enthusiasts lobbied - mostly behind the scenes - to stop this happening. In 1991, the then Cemeteries Manager, together with this same small group, developed a plan to get a large part of Honor Oak Rec turned into a graveyard instead of following the balanced and sustainable plan for reuse of the existing cemeteries - a plan that had been carefully developed in good time in the 1970s to provide for the coming "burial shortage". This left Southwark as the only council in the country which was prepared to turn an urban park into a graveyard - every other local authority in the country having decided that if they were going to carry on using burial plots, reuse was the way ahead. There has been extensive publicity about the plans for the cemeteries in Southwark since 1991, when the original Friends of Honor Oak Rec group started up, and let people know about what had been happening behind the scenes. FOHORG managed to stop Southwark Council turning the whole of Honor Oak Rec into a graveyard. Honor Oak Rec is a heavily used inner city park with fantastic views out over Kent, providing the only open space for, among others, over 3,000 people and many young families living on the high density Honor Oak Estate. Councils don't have to offer burial at all and graveyards are hugely expensive to maintain - only a minority want burial but for some reason we are all made to pay for it. Burial is an expensive personal choice (whether for religious or other reasons) and it's not clear to me why the heavy ongoing cost of this personal choice comes out of public funds when essential services for the living have been chopped.

Engrenages.. In the unlikely event that anyone can remember, or also happens to be catching up at the mo, episode 2 of the current one, at 23:15, whatsherface, Laure, the detective, says something that is subtitled as "We'll get her tomorrow". What does she say in French? - I can't catch it. And the start of her next sentence which is translated as "She has to talk...". And..what are they saying for "bust"? gr....? And...why translate "couilles" as guts when she definitely uses "couilles" in that situation to try to manipulate the bloke? And...why translate "conforme a votre image" as good for your image, not what the judge says either...

Hi Just to mention that Language Lounge has been running since 2008, we have had some fantastic language teaching offered by lovely people, we have seven languages on offer at the moment, next sessions start in March, please see the Language Lounge thread in the What's On section if you're interested. If you would like me to add a line about your scheme to our mailing list, please let me know.

Hello James Thank you for your offer to try to fix this. But you don't need any of my details. I'm just an innocent third party whose telephone number has been wrongly listed against the address of a council property - 5 Monteagle Way, SE15. All that needs to be done is for someone to go into the Council housing database, and delete the landline telephone number (my number) which you have wrongly assoiated with that address. I would rather conduct this correspondence on the EDF so that it's transparent how long it takes for this action to be carried out (the Council already having been told patiently on about 30 occasions, going back as long as I can remember, that you have the wrong number on your records). It's also been suggested to me that the next time a builder, plumber, carpenter etc rings me to say that they are trying to get into 5 Monteagle Way, SE15 I should just tell them to come and carry out repairs at my home. I do have repairs that need doing at my non-council home and I couild pretty much have had the house fixed by now during the time that all these chaps have been sent on abortive visits because the housing dept is using the wrong number. After all given that they're being paid out of Council Tax I might as well make use of their time? If people who are struggling to pay for their own housing are late with the Council Tax payment the Council charges them a ?100 penalty and threatens to send them to jail, so presumably they must be mortified about the thousands that have been wasted because there isn't a single individual they employ who is capable of amending a telephone no on a database?

Hi James For the last decade (approx) Southwark Council has linked my phone number with the address of one of your Southwark Council tenants. I guess the council tenant's number was typed in wrongly, and that's how the Council comes to be calling me. As a result I have had dozens of erroneous calls over the years from Council officers and tradespeople. On every single occasion I patiently point out that they are calling the wrong number and ask them to change it, in order to stop wasting my time and the Council's and so that the Council tenant can get their repairs done. The question: how many Southwark Council officers does it take to change a telephone number? On Monday of this week I was called again by a Southwark Council officer seeking to make an appointment to arrange repairs for your tenant. I explained the history. I asked him if he could remove my phone number from the records. He said it was on a database he could not amend. I asked him to contact the person who could amend the database, and get them to do that. At 15:30 today I was called by a Southwark Council plumber. He said he was waiting outside 5 Monteagle Way where he had been sent to fix some leaking pipes. So a wasted visit, which I guess cost the Council about as much as my monthly Council Tax payment, because no-one can be bothered to amend an error on your database. Can I have a refund on my Council Tax equivalent to the amount that has been wasted over the years? Dare one hope that you or one of your colleagues could get one of your very comfortably paid, pensioned, flexi-timed, etc etc employees, to correct your records? I hope so, because inspired by the recent court case in which a chap who kept getting unwanted cold calls got compensation for his wasted time, I am now going to charge Southwark Council for every time you call me, when you should be calling your tenant at 5 Monteagle Way. I have started the clock from Monday of this week.

"Also named is the London Ambulance Service........" BBC News version as per above link.

From NHS Managers Net, some useful advice (as kindly pointed out, CQC stands for Care Quality Commission): Should you be taken ill, I recommend having pinned to your waistcoat a twenty pound note and a list. This list should be compiled of hospitals you do not wish to be conveyed to and the twenty pound note should be enough for a taxi to take you to where you do want to be looked after. Take my advice, always use a licensed taxi and use this list of hospitals you should avoid: Scarborough Hospital; Milton Keynes Hospital; Royal Cornwall Hospital; Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust in Liverpool; Queen's Hospital, Romford; Stamford & Rutland Hospital; Southampton General Hospital; Croydon University Hospital; Bodmin Hospital, Cornwall; Northampton General Hospital; St Peter's Hospital, Maldon; Queen Mary's Hospital, London; Chase Farm Hospital, London; Westmorland General Hospital; Pilgrim Hospital, Leicestershire; St Anne's House, East Sussex; and Princess Royal Hospital, West Sussex. Should you be having a baby; don't be delivered to, or at, Queen's Hospital in Romford, Essex and if a mental health issue befalls you dodge going to Ainslie and Highams Inpatient Facility, London; The Campbell Centre, Bedford; Forston Clinic, Dorset; The Cavell Centre, Peterborough; The Bradgate Mental Health Unit, Leicestershire; Avon and Wiltshire NHS Mental Health Trust; Blackberry Hill Hospital, Bristol; and Park House, Manchester. If dementia knocks on your door don' t go into Milton Keynes. How can I give this advice? These services have been found wanting; not that the CQC made it public. The Labour opposition team forced them into fessing-up using FoI procedures. As recently as November the CQC has been telling these Trusts, incomprehensibly, it seems, in secret, that in parts of their services staffing levels are dangerous.

At this time of year they are using lots of temp staff who don't know the areas they are working in and will be gone in a few weeks. When I asked why a recorded delivery package with irreplaceable contents had been left on the doorstep in the rain, I was told that the sorting office is no longer allowed to hire its own temporary delivery staff (who used to be mainly local students). The temp posties for the last few years have been hired by and supposedly trained by external agencies. Seems the training doesn't include explaining what recorded delivery is.

I hope you didn't butter them up.

She has a shop in Hastings Old Town, used to be old fashioned hardware emporium.

Also hot spot for clothes moths and mice, apparently. All this cash sloshing about SE22 but we have domestic squalor not seen since "London Labour and the London Poor". (Speaking as one who has had the moths and the mice, but no bugs as yet, happily).

It would be useful to have a handy guide (like the Observer Book of British Birds) to help identify people who look very familiar but you can't name. It causes quite a lot of social anxiety when the famous are out shopping or walking their dogs and you can't place them and so don't know whether to say hello or not. Honor Oak Rec used to be particularly bad for this, it used to ruin our walks. In this context you tend to be thinking that it's someone's husband you met once, not the bloke from Star Wars. I need to apologise to the Man Who Reads the News for saying hello, how are you, half a dozen times, I wasn't stalking him, I thought I knew him from somewhere. He's terribly polite and never once told me to ****** off.