Waiting

Currently I am waiting for:-

• My builder to finish off the work in my newly renovated house. It has gone way over time, 15 months & counting. I'm also waiting for him to dismantle & replace a fence one of his subcontractors built that is totally unsatisfactory. This all involves a plasterer, carpenter & decorator. 
• A fabricator to come & quote for an Edwardian railing fence for the front garden. I've already waited weeks.
• A quote from a landscaper, (very efficient), for my patio & raised beds.
• I'm also trying to cope with waiting patiently for my appointment with an oncologist on Thursday. 

This last one is the most difficult, but at least the appointment came through very quickly.

One of the few benefits of ageing is that I do think that I have become more patient. When I was younger, especially when I was was a head teacher, I always wanted things to be done yesterday if possible. But if not, at least today. Once I had decided on a course of action I wanted to see progress.

This last few years has taught me that often some delay leads to a better solution or decision. The variables change. Things you hadn't thought about become obvious. Sometimes you don't do what you set out to do at all, but something completely different. Waiting isn't a bad thing necessarily. It gives you time to consider & research.

The thing I find very difficult to cope with is waiting for someone else to do the job they have contracted to do. Worse, people who don't communicate at all, so you have to keep chasing. However nice people you employ are, fundamentally what you need is for them to be efficient, timely & professional. My experience over this last year and a half is that a lot of people in the building trade in the UK really have a lot to learn about customer service & customer satisfaction. 

I think most people, whatever the problem they are facing, will be reasonable if they are kept properly informed. My experience is too often that simply doesn't happen. Think of people whose holidays have been disrupted. In an information vacuum people become anxious & then angry & then disruptive. 

People in business who don't understand the importance of good communication are just making a "rod for their own backs".

 

 

Cancer

Bad news - 1 in 2 (50%) of people in the UK born after 1960 will be diagnosed with some form of cancer during their lifetime. Females have the highest lifetime risk of breast, lung and bowel cancers. Males have the highest lifetime risk of prostate, lung and bowel cancers. Good news - Half (50%) of people diagnosed with cancer in England and Wales survive their disease for ten years or more. Really bad news - Nearly half of cancers in England are diagnosed at an advanced stage, when they are harder to treat successfully.

https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics-for-the-uk

I had a possible ovarian cancer scare 5 years ago. Fortunately it proved negative. I'm now in a 2 week waiting slot for an appointment to check for tongue cancer. I'm quite sanguine about health issues having lived with chronic conditions for decades. I don't believe in losing sleep over something until I know it's a reality. Then I will deal with it. In the meantime I get on with living my life.

I do believe in being very pro active & well informed about my own health & body. That is even more true now because the NHS is in such a difficult situation. Getting to see a GP isn't easy & getting a referral & treatment is probably more difficult than ever before. 

I don't know enough about the complexities of running a monolithic organisation like the health service to understand what is wrong & what should be done. I do believe that we are in this situation because of years of underfunding, under provision of medics & under resourcing of care services more generally. In addition I don't believe that the health service should be farmed out to private companies who pay dividends to shareholders.

I suppose my main point is about responsibility. We are each responsible for what we do - the food & drink we put into our bodies, the drugs we take, the activities we participate in, the amount of exercise we do, our habits....It is in our interest to be as healthy as we can be. The NHS is responsible for providing treatment that is effective & appropriate at point of need. It's a contract.

The trouble is it is very close to complete collapse now. 

UPDATE

I saw the Oncologist this morning - Only 10 days from seeing the GP. No waiting around - Straight in. Very thorough, reassuring & helpful. They don't think the lesion is cancer, but it will be removed, possibly on Saturday, but probably next week, then sent for a biopsy, which will hopefully confirm their diagnosis. But whichever way it goes the lump will be gone & I will be able to eat, drink & talk properly once it heals.

Very relieved & pleased. Chatting to the nurse, it's the surgical wards that are under pressure, outpatients is fine. The wards are full & understaffed. The nurse said he could earn more working in a supermarket, but there would be no job satisfaction whatsoever. 

That's the reason we manage to keep nurses, emergency responders, care workers, teachers, doctors, police & everyone else who do a difficult job day in & day out. They are all people who care & want to help their fellow human beings. 

Conservative politicians rely on that & are able to live with the fact that these services are understaffed & underfunded & have been for years. Now politicians have the nerve to demonise these people for threatening strike action. There hasn't been a strike in the NHS since 1982. The fact that nurses will be balloted on strike action on September the 15th is a measure of how fed up they are. The 3.5% governement offer is derisory when inflation is 11.8% & they have effectively had a pay cut for several years. The NHS is short of 50,000 nurses and midwives and the government has no credible plan to fix this.

Actually I really believe that this government has no credible plan to fix any of the mess that we are currently in. The UK is the "Marie Celeste" - there is no captain & no crew.

 

 

 

Manna from Heaven - How to feed the World?

According to the Bible God made the world & everything in it in 7 days. Presumably when he did that there was balance & the complex interrelated systems & biosphere worked effectively. Over the millennia we, who were created thinking, sentient, beings, have managed to wreak havoc & destruction on this beautiful planet. 

Not only that, we have multiplied to the point where we are using up all the natural resources at an unsustainable rate. Look at the Population Matters website, the bare statistics are there in easily assimilatable form.

https://populationmatters.org/the-facts

https://populationmatters.org/news/2022/02/un-report-food-systems-at-breaking-point/

That world population needs to be fed. Currently David Beasley, head of the U.N. World Food Program, said its latest analysis shows that "a record 345 million acutely hungry people are marching to the brink of starvation" — a 25% increase from 276 million at the start of 2022 before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. Globally, hunger levels are alarmingly high. According to the 2022 State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI) report, the number of people affected by hunger rose in 2021 to 828 million, an increase of about 46 million since 2020 and 150 million since 2019, before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.The inequality of access to good, nourishing food is shocking.

https://feedbackglobal.org/knowledge-hub/food-waste-scandal/ 

https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/agriculture/brief/food-security-update

Add to this mix that there is increasing probability of acute water shortages & any intelligent person can see that we are marching towards a massive problem. The combination of both food & water shortages is a recipe for disaster.

We need to change our behaviour before it's too late. Food & water are so basic to life that countries need to be as self sufficient & sustainable as possible. The UK is an island. Importing food from around the world isn't sustainable any more. The world has the capacity to produce enough food for everyone & make sure that it is shared equitably. But that will need political will to make difficult decisions as well as individuals in the world of the "haves" to share equitably with the world of the "have nots". Otherwise there will be civil unrest on a huge scale.

Unfortunately I don't believe in "manna from heaven". We created this mess. We have to sort it out & there isn't much time.

Trust

 "A firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something". Human relationships rely on trust. Trust cements relationships by allowing people to live and work together, feel safe and belong to a group. Trust in a leader allows organizations and communities to flourish, while the absence of trust can cause fragmentation, conflict and even war. People need to trust themselves, others & organisations in order to function well in a society.

Trust is built up through our life experiences. It doesn't just happen, it may well be learned behaviour. The basic conflict of trust and mistrust is established and addressed from the time we are born to around 18 months. Children are particularly trusting of things they are told. 

https://theimportantsite.com/10-reasons-why-trust-is-important/

Broken trust can result in tremendous anxiety and resentment, which can create a wall between ourselves and others. We might withdraw from those close to us and feel quite lonely. Unfortunately, most of us face some form of mistrust or betrayal at some point in our lives. Pistanthrophobia is trust issues resulting from negative past experiences. We need to develop a sense of perspective.

At every level of our lives we need to trust other people in order to function effectively. That trust has to be earned through actions and behaviour. If someone treats me badly or lets me down I may temporarily lose faith in them. If they repeatedly do that I will no longer trust them. It's a simple equation - I learn from the experience. Not everyone has the same ethical stance. Some people are arrogant, entitled, self absorbed & self serving, lack empathy, desire power & wealth at any cost....They are not capable of upholding concepts fairness & compromise.

Human beings are incredibly variable. Losing trust in a family member, friend or neighbour is sad, but not the end of the world. Losing trust in the people who govern your country is very dangerous. I have lived through civil unrest before. I don't want to experience it again, but if we continue with the inept government we have I can envisage it happening only too clearly.

(In)Human Suffering

There are at least 27 Live Conflicts now. 

https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker

We know what is happening almost as soon as it happens through the press, TV & social media. Ukraine is in every news broadcast. There is war in Afghanistan, political instability in Lebanon, war in Yemen, the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, and the conflict in Ethiopia. The war in Syria has lasted 11 years. Conflict & violence are rising worldwide. A quarter of the entire global population lives in conflict-affected areas. People suffer unimaginable hardship & pain. Famine is rampant. A child dies every 10 minutes in Yemen. Millions are displaced from their homes. Repressive dictatorships & military rulers remove any semblance of human rights. Ethnic cleansing is the harshest of discriminatory tactics. Violence against women is rampant. Desperate people sell their children & organs to be able to live.

The cost of this in human & economic terms is unimaginable.

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/facts-about-world-conflicts/

Closer to home, in the UK in 2021/22, approximately 2.17 million people used a foodbank. There are 1,172 independent food banks across the UK in addition to food banks in the Trussell Trust network, Salvation Army, and school-based food banks. That's more than the number of branches of McDonalds! More than a third (37%) of Britons say that, when it is very cold outside, they cannot afford to heat their home to a level where they are comfortably warm. The UK is the 6th largest economy in the world by GDP. (China is now the wealthiest country in the world, having overtaken America).

The Climate Emergency means that people everywhere are suffering from unique weather conditions - drought, heat waves, crop failure, storms, floods, rising sea levels, melting glaciers & warming oceans. This has a knock on effect on wildlife & sensitive, complex, bio systems.

Human suffering is reaching epidemic proportions not just due to the Covid pandemic.

Unless the world is led by people who have the intelligence & will to solve the dire problems that beset us today, rather than accrue money & power to themselves, the human race will drive itself to destruction.

We have a choice. We need to choose wisely & put the right people in power.