Suggestion for improving the NHS, via Charlie Chaplin.

Posted on by JonnyB

CAMPAIGN WEEK ON JBPSD

“If I were in charge of A&E, I would put Charlie Chaplin films on a continuous loop. It wouldn’t matter about the sound and it would cheer everybody up.”

I wrote this only last week, and Mousie leapt into action. She is an A&E nurse, and is going to raise the issue at her next team meeting!!! (NB I am making a sexist assumption that Mousie is a female whereas this is a 21st century non-sexist world and it is quite fine for men to be nurses as well if they are unable to become doctors).

Kudos to Mousie. She is a doer.

This journal has a number of readers who work in the medical professions. Will YOU follow suit and press for Charlie Chaplin films to be shown on a continuous loop in your A&E Department? Will you? If there is some resistance you can allow Buster Keaton as well.

Remember the benefits:

– It will make people happy who are unhappy due to their medical circumstances;
– It will make people happy who are unhappy due to the fact that placing a television in the corner of a room, tuning it to a spoken-word station and then turning the sound off is beyond a fatuous use of valuable NHS funds and approaching the provocation to riot;
– The staff on the ward will all naturally work a lot faster as they are inspired by the pace of the movie;
– If there is a fight or aggravation by drunks, people will know how to avoid being hit by running round the room five times and then doing a head-over-heels through the aggressor’s legs before turning round to kick them in the bottom.

But, above all, for an infinitesimally tiny outlay in the big scheme of things, it will make the world a very slightly sunnier place.

So, if you work in the NHS, are on speaking terms with your MP, know how to set up these Facebook groups or have ever used that petition thing on the 10 Downing Street site – do something.

The ill will thank you for it.

Thus ends Campaign Week on JBPSD. It has been interesting, doing something different over the summer. Next week we shall return to stories about the Village and my exciting life in it. Enjoy your Bank Holiday weekends.

Closing down the Post Office thing.

Posted on by JonnyB

CAMPAIGN WEEK ON JBPSD

As a sort of full stop on Post Office matters, the animation and song have now been uploaded onto the You Tube.

You can leave a comment there if you want. Clare’s original hosted version is better quality, and has the words, if you are planning to use it at a karaoke party.

When the song was originally recorded, I think most people twigged that essentially it’s less to do with Post Offices and more a silly little satire on the way that when people try to communicate with the ‘yoof’ in their own language, something genuinely risible usually results. But shorn of the original context and with the addition of Clare’s superb bunny video, I’ve seen it archived in the Centre for Political Song, (alongside Bragg, Dylan, Public Enemy et al), shown at a community film festival, linked to by militant Royal Mail staff sites and presented to the Post Office management by strategic design consultants.

And, yes, cited by an anti-Post Office closure campaign as a great example of how to get the kids involved. No link, as I’m genuinely touched by this and don’t want them to think that I’m taking the mick.

So there you go. As one campaign opens, another closes. The campaign is laid to rest; I shall wander up the road to weigh my parcels secure in the knowledge that, however unwittingly, I have Done My Bit. I need a new project to work on now. I wonder what it could be…?

Iraqi interpreters.

Posted on by JonnyB

CAMPAIGN WEEK on JBPSD

Needing to recover from the Village UFO incident, and rocking from side to side still as I try to write my report of the Village Music Festival, I shall be branching out this week. It is Campaign Week!!! Here, I shall fearlessly campaign.

We shall start with Iraq. Iraq has many of the problems of this part of Norfolk, with outsiders coming in and putting a strain on the local infrastructure.

So a while back, our recruiting chap out there had a conversation with some locals. Essentially, people were trying to explode our soldiers and, whatever you think about the actual warry bit, I think it’s generally accepted that we would rather our soldiers were not exploded.

“You couldn’t give us a bit of a hand?” asked the recruiting chap.

Iraqis #1 and #2 drew deep breaths. “I’d like to help,” said Iraqi #1 finally. “The economy’s frankly gone a bit tits up here. And to be honest, being an educated human being, I would also like a situation where people didn’t explode other people all the time. I’m not really into that. Just because we are Arabs and live in this war-torn country does not mean that we conform to your simple Western stereotypes.” He turned to Iraqi#2. “Does it, Abdul?”

“No, Mohammed,” replies his friend.

“The thing is,” continued #1, “We’d be risking our lives. There are death squads. By helping you catch murderers some would consider us traitors. If we help and they catch up with us then…” he tailed off.

“Oh – don’t worry,” we British replied. “I think you’ll find that the war won’t last that long. We’ll win quite easily and then Iraq will be a lovely place. A bit like Switzerland – that is the plan.”

“But with hotter weather,” chipped in his assistant.

“After all, we’ve got loads of experience in this sort of thing,” we continued. “I really can’t envisage anything going wrong, ever.”

Iraqi #2 thought deeply. “Yes, we will help,” he concludes. “Our multilingual skills and local knowledge will be very useful to you, and will help stop your soldiers being exploded. You have convinced us. Switzerland, you say? Will there be Toblerone?”

“Oh definitely,” we replied. “Sign there. I have to pop over to Afghanistan now, where Kenneth Williams and Bernard Bresslaw are causing no end of a nuisance.”

*

A few months later and, unfortunately, the Swissification of Iraq has hit a few delays. In fact, it’s not going well at all. Iraqi #2’s association with us means that he is now desperate for our protection. Iraqi #1 isn’t that bothered any more – he was tortured and murdered by the death squads a couple of weeks back.

It strikes me that if you’re going to have a system of giving asylum to people who face terror and horror in their own country, then it would be a reasonable idea to start with people who face terror and horror as a consequence of helping you out. This doesn’t seem to be happening. So do we address this, or do we forget the whole thing?

You can find out a bit more about this at Dan Hardie’s weblog, here.

We go to the zoo.

Posted on by JonnyB

JonnyB’s Holiday Report – #3 of 3

I have not been to a zoo since a particularly ill-thought out double date around twenty years ago. Toddler Servalan screams with excitement at the first sight of a zebra.

Personally I am looking forward to the elephants. It strikes me that most other zoo animals are just larger or differently-coloured versions of things that you see all the time, apart from elephants, which are unusual and thus very worth making the effort for. I expect they came from space originally.

We pass the lemur enclosure. The Toddler screams with excitement. A seagull then lands in front of us. The Toddler screams with excitement and I realise that I could have saved £19 and just sat on the beach for the day watching free wildlife.

It is a paradox, but I find the look of absolute, utter delight on her face desperately sad. That condition of total happiness and wonder is something that is so fleeting; a few nanoseconds later you are an adult and you will never, ever feel like that again.

The closest thing that I can remember as an adult to that unconditional delight was a few years back on Saffron Hill, in London. A builders’ cradle and hoist had gone terribly wrong, upending a trade canister of white emulsion over a passing businessman, below. He was rooted there, totally white, paint dripping off his suit and briefcase, gesticulating furiously and shouting until the police arrived. It was, by a long chalk, the most brilliant thing that I have ever witnessed in my life. But she can get all that from a passing seagull.

We trot round the rest of the zoo. I know zoos are good at all that conservation stuff and all that, but it seems to me that there are a high proportion of non-endangered small South American mammals that are presumably quite easy to feed and house. The LTLP feeds a parrot.

There are no elephants. I am crushed and disappointed at this. We return to the chalet, pack, and drive home. Some mysterious cucumbers are leaning against the front door.