In my last post I was asked in a comment why I don’t fear death, what brought me to that attitude towards it.

I would guess that due to the amount of death, ‘near death’, and ‘about to die’ that I have seen due to my work it has driven me to think about it a bit more than a ‘normal’ person would.

The two things that influence my thoughts about death would be my atheism, and my grasp, tenuous as it may be at some times, of logic.

Firstly, my atheism, means that I have no fear of a Heaven, or Hell, no Limbo (and sadly no Valhalla). So I don’t think that there is anything after death. You die, and you stop. Stop thinking, stop feeling, stop worrying about work, or family, or why the cat keeps scratching your sofa.

And if I stop thinking, then there is no consciousness, and therefore no experiencing of anything, including time.

So when I am dead, that’s it – I won’t feel anything because I won’t exist anymore. When I sleep I have no experience of time, no feelings of pain, no nothing. I don’t worry about if I am going to wake up because my conscious...

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I’m not massively scared of anything. In part because I’ve seen a lot of bad stuff, in part because once you are not scared of dying a lot of fear goes away.

So when my brain wants to try and scare me with a nightmare it has to get a bit ‘creative’.

So it tries to frustrate me – Last night I dreamt that there was an older Star Wars ‘sequel’, it made no plot sense, the lightsabers were plastic toys doused in lighter fuel, and David Cameron had a guest role.
Bad enough, but my dream went further, the creators of the film had managed to hijack IMDB, so when I looked up the film (in order to avoid any other films the director had made) it loaded malware onto my computer.
And then every time I tried to delete it, it would reinstall.

Nightmare.

Normally I don’t care for New Year resolutions, in my view one day is much like another. This is something that is also reinforced by shift work – I barely had any idea what day it was, let alone the date. Heck sometimes I didn’t know my own name.
So, one day is very much the same as another one, so why wait for a special date to make a change in your life.
However, this year feels different, in part I think it’s because I’m not in work (I am technically,but it’s… ‘complicated’), so it seems to make sense to mark a certain date, especially with things that have been whirling around my head for quite some time.

Also, if I write them down I’m sort of honour bound to follow them. I may well explain some of them in more detail at a later date.

1) Blog more – As in blog at all. I used to love blogging, then I sort of fell out of the habit of it. Partly because of the reason for resolution 2. Planning on writing something a few times a week, luckily hardly anyone will see it as my days of being a world famous sexy internet ambulance god are far...

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Taps mike
Is this thing on?

As some of you may know, as well as being ambulance staff, I'm also a registered nurse. For that privilege I pay the NMC a sum of money every year to be on the professional register. If I am not on that register then I cannot practice as a nurse.

Should I ever have to leave the ambulance service nursing would allow me to pay the rent.

The NMC have the power to strike me off the register, meaning that I would no longer be able to work as a nurse.

Which is why this blog should come to an end.

No longer can I be safe to tell you all about the terrible conditions in some of the nursing homes that I go to. I can't tell you about the problems that occur in A&E and I can't shout about the atrocious state of home/social care.

It's just not safe because to whistleblow like this can result in you being struck off the register.

What this decision means is that all bloggers that have a professional registration are now skating on thin ice. Nurse bloggers, Doctor bloggers, Paramedic bloggers – all these are on a professional register and all end up writing...

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What a Difference a day makes.

On the anniversary of the 7/7 bombings,

In the Commons, MPs paid tribute to the actions of NHS workers and members of the emergency services in the wake of the bombings.
Speaking during health questions in the chamber, shadow health secretary Andy Burnham described the actions of NHS staff on the day as “heroic”.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt praised the “extraordinary bravery” of the emergency services.

And then one day later

Public sector workers, including civil servants, teachers, nurses, police officers and members of the armed forces, face another four-year pay freeze as a result of today’s budget.

There is a reason why I tend to keep off the internet when the 7/7 bombings anniversary rolls around, it’s not because of any traumatic memories (I did nothing more than turn up to cover my colleagues who dealt with it all, while I had one ‘Maternataxi’ job).

My thoughts on the days around it can be found here

What makes me angry is that on the anniversary there is a big hoo-ha about how ‘London stood as one’, with no hate but just a determination to keep on living and muddling along as we did before the bombing.

And it’s true – we did.

But then the media realised that they would sell more papers, get more eyeballs, and have a bigger influence by villifying muslims. By causing hatred and fear. And now we end up with groups like the EDL and ‘Britain First’. Two organisations that came into being based on the lies that the media has spun.

So something that should have unified us has, instead, just divided us. And it seems it’s going to continue that way – all for the benefit of media mogals and shareholders.

I checked my email – something I now only do two or three times a week and found this email.

Hello,

Thank you very much for getting everything wrapped up so quickly but unfortunately I cannot say the same for myself.

We are having some annoying payment issues and it has caused a pretty hefty back log, as it’s a bot running payments there is a queue, Once you are first in the queue you will be paid but until then I cannot really do much.

If you need to pull the article then fair enough but can you please keep hold of it to repost as the payment will certainly come at some point.

Regards

omnibuzzmedia

I think as a species we are becoming more and more adept at filtering spam, and I found it strange that this would be sent to me.

Then an hour later I got this.

Hello,

I am very sorry for my previous email, I have just realised I sent the complete wrong message, the intended message is below. (if you have received this message more than once please excuse me, my email system is bugging out)

Thank you for taking the time to read my email, I am...

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Lord Warner has released a report stating that we should pay £10 ‘tax’ to use the NHS and that the NHS is ‘not cost effective’ despite all the evidence to the contrary. Both of these statements are frankly bollocks. However we have grown used to these lies and, as the media keeps pushing them, eventually they will be believed.

I looked up Lord Warner, he is the executive director along with a Suzanne Warner of ‘Sage Advice Ltd.’ A company that has no contact details, no website and no telephone number. At least none that I can find. This doesn’t mean that this ‘company’ is in any way dishonest, but as a simpleton in the ways of business I can’t see the reasoning behind it.

Of course, this, and Lord Warner’s previous job advising Apax Partners (a company that invests in private healthcare) might mean that he has some sort of vested interest in bringing about further privatisation of the NHS.

Sadly the newspapers only printed Lord Warner’s side of the story (i.e. Bullshit) and have not in any way...

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I’m going to state right now that for most cases I am completely against force-feeding. There are issues of capacity and sacrifice and so on that would take a post of its own to describe, and that is not what I’m writing about here.
 
It’s the Yasiin Bey video showing him undergoing the procedure for the force-feeding of a prisoner at Guantanamo bay. It was created to highlight the evil of force-feeding.  

Here it is.

 
I have serious issues with this video.

 
Here is another video showing the exact same procedure.

(Here is a video on how to insert one into an eight month old child)

The procedure shown is the insertion of a nasogastric (NG) tube. I have placed more NG tubes than I can remember and I have never seen a reaction as strong as that shown in the first video. It certainly isn’t very pleasant to have a NG tube inserted as it tickles the back of the throat that makes you want to gag (or swallow), but it is not this apparent torture that is being shown.

 
An NG tube is inserted in hospitals for a number of...

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