Karen

[2015] - pandemic preparedness

2023-04-21T00:09:38Z

It's IMO probably now worth thinking back to the stuff you really missed from March - June 2020 and considering ways of arranging it for yourself / household.

COVID is ongoing, yes. But the potential for bird flu in the coming years is somewhat concerning. At this point, there's time to act on both stuff like home improvements and on bigger things like moving home / changing career, as well as on littler things [like weighted blankets/lap pads].

Rambling

Occupation

Safest in a pandemic, from physical illness:
* office work that can be done from home, in a field that will probably keep operating
* making and selling tangible objects, where you can do the making from home [ie. almost the entirety of Etsy]
* working with a consistent team / not encountering other people randomly in person at work [eg. being a farmer]
* outdoor work
* driving alone
* being the person at home caring for young children / home educating older ones
* being a student on a course that can be taught online

Accommodation

* whereabouts do you want to be in the country - city/town/village/very rural + who / what do you want to be near? Can you move to improve this?
* do you have enough space for your household? Outdoor space [garden / allotment / parks [but probably restrictions on their use during worst bits of a pandemic] Think about working from home space / trying to separate working areas from relaxing ones / having a good set up of desk + chair for work.

Health

* being up to date with vaccinations
* good management of pre-existing health conditions
* stuff to help you look after yourself if you catch 'flu.
* telephone / online therapist/physio/OT etc
* monitoring equipment - blood pressure, SpO2, thermometer, peak flow meter etc

Touch/physical comfort - esp for people who don't live with people they're on cuddling terms with, but relevant to everyone as you might decide to isolate within your household
[none of this stuff is the same as seeing and touching other people, but it could be reasonable symptom relief]
* weighted blankets [different sizes/weights for different purposes - the one for use in bed might be too heavy for sitting on the sofa]
* heated blankets / pads
* learn about simple lymphatic drainage / other self-massage techniques / dry brushing
* soft clothes / blankets
* maybe compression clothing
* other stuff that feels good on your skin [cream? / shower gel? / exfoliating gloves? / sponges?]
* everyday items that feel good in your mouth / hands [cutlery / glasses / mugs, pens, notebooks]
* jewellery designed to be played with / chewed - fidget rings / spinners on necklaces
* bed linen that feels good to your skin
* maybe stuff that smells nice that reminds you of close people.

Predict and prepare for shortages
* Expect toilet rolls, pasta, cleaning supplies, PPE to be in short supply. You can stock up on all of these in advance. 2020 is still close - people will remember what there were shortages of last time and demand for these items will increase in anticipationof a shortage.
* Consider muslin / cut up old bits of fabric and a lidded bucket with disinfectant + water as a substitute for toilet roll for urine. [If things were really dire this would work for faeces / blood too, though I'd much rather start using fabric for urine earlier to save disposible toilet paper for faeces / blood] [and bear in mind that with some illnesses, the ill person may be advised to wash towels / clothes / bed linen at a high temperature / their bodily waste might be extra infectious, so limited toilet paper supplies might be most sensibly allocated to them]
* If bird 'flu, expect a serious egg shortage to last for ages. Experiment, whilst eggs are mostly available with egg substitutes in cakes / scrambled tofu etc.

PPE / cleaning - assume fomite transmission will be a problem in a way it isn't with COVID.
* FFP3 masks / respirators that fit everybody in the household. Lots of them.
* Work out where to quarantine post / deliveries / groceries
* Think about how to clean envelopes / boxes/ food containers
* Have enough emollient cream around that you can wash your hands lots without them becoming too dry/painful.
* Assume infection can enter through breaks in the skin, so try to avoid cuts - wear gloves for gardening, don't let your skin stay too dry. Cover cuts that happen with plasters / dressings.

Garden
* Consider the location of bird boxes / feeding tables in your garden - depending on which birds have it / how it's being spread [whether mostly bird to person or person to person] you might want to discourage birds from staying long in your garden by removing boxes / feeding tables. Alternatively you might want to add more to encourage birds to come in, to provide interesting stuff for you to look at out of the windows, especially if you're very stuck indoors.
* Consider whether keeping chickens to lay eggs is a good choice for you. [Might be, if you know you can keep your birds safe from infection. Probably won't be a good time to start doing this during a bird 'flu pandemic as there will be restrictions on moving animals / it'll be hard to tell if birds are infected or not. So if eggs are important enough to you to keep chickens, I'd start buying chickens sooner rather than later]
* Consider growing fruit / veg / herbs
* Consider an allotment for extra growing space [and good justification to leave your house]
* Consider allocating some space to outdoor exercise / for children to play. Outdoor exercise equipment is worth looking at.
* Consider shade for the summer / ways of warming the space in winter [to enable you to make good use of your garden space in different weathers, so you have more options than just indoords and also to have a safer space to invite guests to. Garden furniture that's comfortable to sit on is good.

~~[to be continued at some other point]~~ - going to be edited a lot.

comments

COVID-19 - movement restrictions

2020-03-28T12:08:09Z

Cutting for talking about COVID-19

Re-using/plagarising what I wrote on Facebook yesterday.

Guidance is not law. [except for some odd occasions where it is]

The Regulations (ie. the law) restricting people from leaving where they're living is http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/contents/made - read Regulation 6

The guidance produced by the government does not reflect the law - it is much more restrictive. The Court will only enforce law, not guidance, so get some proper advice before paying any fixed penalty notice. [The regime of fixed penalty notices here seems like it could turn into a money making exercise/tax on the poor and others who fail to get advice that will allow them to defend any proposed prosecution.]

You can leave your home if you have a "reasonable excuse" and a non-exhaustive list of examples is given.

Without doing things that are currently stupid ie. holding a party, BBQ or other event with lots of people attending and being closer to one another than 2 metres or going mountaineering or somewhere else you might get into difficulties of the sort requiring a mountain rescue team to help you out of, there is a lot of scope for being outside your home.

If you need/want to exercise outdoors more than once a day, whilst following the advice about social distancing, go for it.

If you want to deliver something to a family member or friend who doesn't meet the current definition of "vulnerable" go for it.

If you're sharing your home with others and it's all got a bit tense, or worse, it's OK to go out.

Public health is important, but so is the government being honest in its publications. There's no good reason for the government to be issuing guidance that is so much more restrictive than the legislation without acknowledging that that's what it's doing.

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COVID-19 - random thoughts

2020-03-17T18:28:31Z

Cutting to help people who're limiting what they're reading about this

Wondering whether the sequence of handwashing is important or whether it's enough that you've washed all of your hands and the sequence shown in NHS posters/videos is random. I've now basically got the technique without having to think too much about it, but it's not automatic, so I'm swapping the steps around most times I'm washing my hands.

Some of the resources I've seen (maybe from the WHO?) talks about washing your wrists as you wash your hands. Others don't. Wondering if we should all be giving up on wearing wrist watches to make sure we wash our hands (and wrists) properly and if wearing old fashioned nurses watches [of the sort you pin to your top] will catch on. Also wondering whether anybody's making any devices to hold smart watches to a piece of clothing rather than a wrist - this would seem to me to be an untapped gap in the market for people who like their smart watches.

Also wondering why in ITUs they initially sedate and intubate people, rather than giving them tracheostomies where they could have less sedation. [google might help me with this, haven't been wondering intently enough to go looking yet].

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COVID-19 - making history?

2020-03-17T17:59:18Z

Cutting to help people trying to limit how much of this sort of thing they're reading

Feeling like we're being watched by historians from 2120 at the moment. Imagining they'll be pouring over what looks to them like primitative technology to find our records of this pandemic to help inform planning for the next one. Pandemics have happened throughout history, COVID-19 won't be the last.

Basically I reckon journalling and other writing about COVID-19 is a good thing to encourage as apart from the immediate benefits, we're all getting to talk to history and some of what we will say will hopefully be preserved like the diaries from 1918.

Have had a couple of moments of feeling really strange about it all - in Morrisons last week standing in a long queue for the checkout, with Karma Chameleon being played over the supermarket's audio system and looking at the people around me thinking "they haven't got a clue what's coming / how many people are actually going to die." [I've been alive to pandemics as a real thing since I worked at the MHRA well over a decade ago].

Then last night as I was reading bits of news online, the combination of the changed government advice and the number of places that are closing in response to the pandemic gave me the feeling of being in the first half hour of a disaster film.

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COVID-19 - lots to learn from maybe unexpected sources

2020-03-17T13:26:44Z

Cutting to help people trying to limit how much they read re this

Have been finding myself thinking over the past week or so that within the pandemic there are lots of people with specialist knowledge that is suddenly becoming knowledge that needs to be much more general.

Hairdressers, in addition to the obvious examples of health care practitioners, for example, spend a lot of time washing their hands and probably have useful things to teach the rest of us about how to wash our hands more frequently whilst minimising the bad effects on our skin.

Anybody who has recovered from pneumonia, might have things they can usefully tell us about what helped whilst they were ill/as they were recovering.

Anybody with lung problems/breathlessness is likely to have information they can pass on about what helps them. The same for anybody who has fatigue.

People who for reasons of their own health, already deliberately limited face to face contact with others, or had this as a side effect of not being able to travel or have the energy to spend socialising in person, are likely to have good ideas for how to spend time when we're seeing fewer people face to face.

Prisoners probably have quite a bit to say about how to exercise in confined spaces.

People living in poverty and people who used to do so, are likely to have good ideas for substitutions / things you can work round not having eg. toilet rolls, disposible menstural products.

People with experiences of living in non-UK cultures are likely to have other good ideas about working around things it's hard to get eg. the bidet substitue for toilet roll.

Depending on what sort of demand there is for hospital beds, I suspect some seriously ill patients who would in peacetime be admitted to hospital will be left at home to be cared for by their close people. If this is the case, anybody with experience in providing intimate personal care is likely to have knowledge worth sharing eg. how you change the bed linen when someone is lying in bed.

Chefs/bakers/cooks should be able to help with recipes for soups/broths/ other smooth foods it's easier for people who are breathless to eat. They might be able to help with flavourful drinks.

There will be lots more; these are the ones that occured to me as I was thinking round the issue for people individually, rather than the other side of it eg. manufacturers / engineers who can turn their skill to making medical equipment. I saw someone on Twitter suggest airline cabin crew have skills that make them easy to retrain into health care roles.

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The problems with Just in Time

2020-03-13T11:40:44Z

The current situation with alcohol hand gels, loo rolls and pasta illustrates one of the big problems with consumers operating on a just in time basis. If your supermarket supplier is operating this way (as they do), and they run out of stock, which they will replenish quickly but not instantly and the item in question is one that you need immediately, you're in difficulties.

Bottom line: for things that are essential to you start to replenish your own supplies when you open the penultimate one you have; this allows time to accommodate your first choice of shop not having it and needing to wait for it to come into stock/visit somewhere else. [and also allowa you a bit of freedom to not buy the first barely acceptable instance of the item, but to wait until the one you want is available].

As consumers none of us have specific agreements with the supermarkets eg. "you will supply me 2kg of cheese every month or you pay me $lots" the way a larger, manufacturing business would where a failure by a supplier to supply enough Widget X on time means they have to stop production.

We've also seen a further instance of what we know happens [think about all the marketing tactics that take advantage of this by suggesting scarcity]; when there appears to be a shortage of something demand for it increases.

Caveats: Yes I know there are restriction around repeat prescriptions. I know that some people don't have enough money to do this and other people don't have the storage space. And I know "opening the penultimate one" won't translate very well to some items, particularly perishable ones, but the concept of not waiting until you're nearly at the end of what you have is sound.

TLDR: if you can avoid it, don't operate your essential shopping on a just in time basis. You are leaving yourself at the mercy of retailers and of everybody else's purchasing habits.

Edit: Also note that the retail response isn't "we're very sorry we're not meeting your requirements, we'll get stuff back in stock ASAP", but "stop buying so much". As individual consumers we do not have the negotiating power we need to get a better service from the retailers.

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Power cuts and other emergencies

2020-02-25T17:20:51Z

Having spent a bit of time compiling a specific instance of this information for my own use in my own house, I wanted to share the format / headings I used in compiling information for use in an emergency situation as I think it's possibly useful for other people in thinking about preparing something similar.

The two problems I'm dealing with here are:

1. making a written record of telephone numbers and other information for use if I have no (or limited) internet access, with priority given to what information I'm most likely to want if I have no electricity.
2. recording information about my house in case somebody else has to deal with it in my absence.

I've included email addresses as well as phone numbers, as (1) my tech has some battery life, which would allow me some internet access via 4G at the beginning of a power cut, (2) I would probably be able to travel to somewhere else with electricity, at which point having a written record of email addresses I'm likely to want saves time searching for them.

1. Details of the property - the full postal address and a six figure grid reference etc. Recording a six figure grid reference is probably overkill unless you're somewhere rural where postcodes cover bigger areas than they do in towns.

2. Location of a first aid kit, meters and stopcocks

4. Bin collection info.

5. Location of the BT master socket

6. Electricity - power cuts 105 + details of the relevant electricity distributor - see https://www.energynetworks.org/info/faqs/who-is-my-network-operator.html

7. Gas

Gas leaks - 0800 111 999
HSE Gas Safety Advice - 0800 300 363
Gas Safe - 0800 408 5500 / enquiries@gassaferegister.co.uk - general enquiries
Gas Safe - 0800 371782 - repair people after an emergency or use gassafe website.

8. Water / Sewage

9. Telephone / Broadband (eg. who to contact when no telephone or internet)

10. Medical stuff
Nearest A&E
Nearest Minor Injuries / Urgent Care Centre, if appropriate
GP surgery
Local Pharmacies
Dentist + out of hours info
Opticians
Reference to NHS 111

11. Police
Reference to 101 and to specific contact details for local neighbourhood team/ station etc.

British Transport Police
Phone: 0800 405040
Text: 61016
first_contact@btp.pnn.police.uk

12. Fire service
Non-emergency contact info for local fire service

13. Details of local sandbag distribution arrangements

14. Details of very local grit bins

15. District/Borough Council contact details

16. County Council contact details [or replace 15 + 16 with Unitary Authority contact details]

17. Details of local radio stations

18. House insurance
Policy no + phone no to make claims

19. Nearest Citizens Advice Bureau or similar advice providing organisation

20. Electoral information eg. details of my ward/civil parish/constituency etc

21. Details of local elected officials

22. Details for my MP

23. Town / Civil Parish Council details

24. Local library details

25. Helplines

Shout: text SHOUT to 85258 / info@giveusashout.org

Samaritans: jo@samaritans.org / 116123 / 07725 909090

Anti-terrorist hotline: 0800 789321

Crimestoppers: 0800 555 111

National Rail Enquiries: 08457 48 49 50

Shelter: 0808 800 4444

Mind: 0300 123 3393

No Panic: 0844 967 4848

Rethink Mental Illness: 0300 5000 927

Sane: 0300 304 7000

Young Minds: Parents’ Helpline: 0808 802 5544

NSPCC: 0808 800 5000

Refuge: 0808 2000 247

Rape Crisis: 0808 802 9999

Local Rape Crisis info

Local SARC details

Victim Support: 0808 168 9111

Family Lives: 0808 800 2222

Family Line: help@familyline.org.uk / 0808 800 5678

Action for Children - local info

Home Start – local info

LGBT Switchboard: 0300 330 0630 / chris@switchboard.lgbt

Galop – LGBT Domestic Abuse: 0300 999 5428 / 0800 999 5428 / help@galop.org.uk

26. Details of local bus operating companies

27. Details of people I know personally I might want to contact if I had no electricity.
Think about:
- Close people - whether family of origin, chosen family, partners, close friends
- Local people
- Longer distance people [whether people useful for coordinating info because they're likely to be away from the crisis or people who might want reassurance]

28. Details of/for useful trades people etc.

Aerial/satellite dish fitting person
Damp/ventilation reporting person
Electrician
Glazier
Heating Engineer
IT servicing person
Locksmith
MoT person
Pest control person
Photocopying place
Solicitors
Surveyor
Takeaways [Indian + fish & chips)
Taxi firms

[Looking at this list again, I need to add a plumber of the sort that deals with drains/toilets/washing machines + someone who deals with broken fence panels + a general handy person]

29. Details of local places of worship

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BiCon

2018-08-06T13:34:35Z

*waves* at people reading. Happy to interact on Dreamwidth with BiCon-attending people though I'm not very good at posting to Dreamwidth these days.

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Trusting your own judgment/evaluating advice critically

2017-06-17T23:07:50Z

The fire at Grenfell Tower is amongst all sorts of other things, a reminder of something I learnt on 9/11.

Sometimes people, seemingly in authority, get it wrong and give out advice that is wrong for the situation. Blind obedience to advice can kill. Equally, in other circumstances, not following good advice can also kill. I know if I'd been in one of the World Trade Center Buildings and had been told to stay where I was I'd have done that. I'm older and less compliant nowadays. What would I have done if I'd been in Grenfell Tower? I don't know:-/

So, my advice, for what it's worth goes like this:

1. Nearly always you are the best judge of the situation on the ground, because you are there. There's an amusing pseudo-safety sign I've seen online that says something like "in the event of fire, evacuate the building before updating Facebook" and it's right. In an acute situation don't phone/email/poke the internet for help from friends or family instead of acting to get yourself somewhere safer. [Phone/email/internet for getting help if you *can't* help yourself to somewhere safer without help is different]
1.5. Teach children autonomy by stages as they can cope with it; the correct response to fire is to get out of the building and phone 999 before contacting a parent. You don't want your children not knowing how to act without your assistance, because there may be circumstances when you aren't there.
2. Advice from authority figures who are physically present with you vs. being on the phone stands IMO, a better chance of being accurate to your situation, but should still be subject to critical evaluation. Part of that critical evaluation might be that it's best to go along with for now, but that you need to keep the situation under review.
3. Advice can be perfectly good advice for most situations and still be wrong in your circumstances. Assume good faith, but remember they're people too and they make mistakes/don't have the same information you've got.

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LJ at last being unusable:-(

2017-04-06T01:06:46Z

Joining the crowd and stopping cross posting to LJ after this post.

Not sure what I'm going to do about content that's on LJ - I probably want to (re)import comments, but I don't know how to do that and won't have time to look at this till the weekend. Probably not going to delete my LJ account but just won't use it. But not making a decision about that now.

I'm karen2205 on DW as well as LJ.

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Policies if I got to be Prime Minister

2015-05-03T14:37:20Z

Rambling onto a screen. Won't ever get to actually do this

1. Amendments to use of prison.

- reduce the use of short sentences, make the minimum sentence at least an academic year long to be served in prison. [allow time for effective therapeutic interventions to be undertaken/prisoners to gain qualifications that will help them find jobs]
- allow people who complain "x in prison gets treated better than me living on benefits" etc to go and live in a prison if they so choose, subject to the same rules and regulations as prisoners. [Aim is the place where this happens is ultimately a supportive half-way house type place, because people who'd actually choose that probably need some help establishing an independent life]
- increase the level of mental health expertise available in prisons.
- increase the availability of diagnostic testing for dyslexia etc. in prisons.
- remove prisoners with IQs of less than 70 to more suitable settings.

2. Benefits system
- design it so that there is always something that can be lost and always an incentive for doing the right thing. Long term sanctions are (apart from inhumane) not effective in promoting behavioural change.
- where money is being withheld because of someone's behaviour, it isn't lost forever and they can access it as they show they are complying with reasonable requirements - there's always a way to earn the money lost back.
- reduce overall use of sanctions - should be an exceptional thing, with staff being incentivised for using them as little as possible.
- work out the correct 'nuisance value' figure ie. the amount where it costs more to work out the merits of someone's claim than the cost of just paying them. Consider introduction of a citizen's income of this amount, that's taxable, with people able to claim more if they can show specific circumstances that mean they have an entitlement to and/or need for a higher amount.
- treat all adults as individuals, not as part of a couple (to reduce the disincentive to being a cohabiting couple if you're on a low income).
- provide careers advice to adults, as well as job hunting assistance.
- remove the link between benefits payment and job hunting assistance [ie. you can get help with job hunting even if you're not entitled to anything more than a nuisance value/citizen's income payment]
- rework the unemployment figures, with the specific intention of finding out how many people want work and are looking for it.

3. Housing
- lots of disincentives to own residential property that's not being used.
- incentives to build more property/regenerate brownfield sites.
- make better use of bits of the country that aren't London and the South East.
- better variety of tenancy options available, as well as assured short hold tenancies, with financial incentives for landlords to keep property in good repair and to offer longer length tenancies.
- reform system for buying and selling housing in England and Wales to reduce gazumping problem.
- financial incentives to increase the availability of affordable short stay housing (thinking of improving mobility of labour market, by making it easier for people to take jobs in different bits of the country).

4. Citizenship
- introduce much better consistency for children and teenagers about what they can do/are responsible for at different ages. [you can be convicted of murder at 10, the Family Court probably wouldn't be willing to listen to your evidence at the same age, you can marry at 16 but not vote till 18].
- extend the end of Year 11 to the end of the summer term (not last Friday in June) and add first aid to the curriculum and the Life in the UK test (+ ? other stuff).
- maybe introduce specific block courses for those of sixth form age who aren't in school or at college to provide specific teaching in budgeting, practical cooking (not food technology), home maintenance [including both housework and minor repairs and basic sewing]. Offer such courses within sixth forms to those present.
- maybe reduce voting age to 16.

5. Constitutional stuff
- disestablish the Church of England
- sort out the House of Lords (I can think of good arguments for it being a wholly appointed chamber, but with an independent appointments commission, rather than full of party-political nominees. Can also think of good arguments for it being elected)
- introduce Re-Open Nominations as an option in all elections
- consider different electoral systems (my preference is AV, but I don't know enough about them to be sure).
- Pass into English law the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child and Rights of Disabled People.
- Introduce at least one more bank holiday

6. Law stuff
- Introduce non-fault divorce, without a 2 year waiting period
- Make pre-nuptial agreements compulsory [even if they say "we don't want to make plans now in case we separate, we'll take things as they fall at the time"]
- Rework birth certificates so they include (1) details of the providers of sperm/ovum and womb and (2) details of who the child's parents are in everyday life.
- Introduce an intermediate state between Special Guardianship and adoption, where the particular role of a Special Guardian can continue into adulthood
- Alter rules around adoption to make it no longer the case that all links to a child's birth family are extinguished. Adoption isn't a perfect solution and these children need all the help they can get. They should keep all rights arising from their relationship to birth relatives and acquire new ones with their adoptive family [though the rights of their birth relatives will necessarily be limited].
- Introduce a procedure to allow adults to declare themselves family members of each other, to provide legal/societal recognition of chosen family.
- Improve availability of legal aid
- Get the Law Commission working on tidying up bits of legislation that are messy that no one's had time to deal with for 80 years.
- Look at ways to direct people's pro-bono work into areas that aren't covered by legal aid - [not an expert in this, but there are gaps where there isn't public funding, but the main providers of pro-bono work aren't able to cover them]

7. Education
- financial benefits to establishing community schools without a religious character
- abolish collective worship in schools
- make sure there is financial parity by way of student support between full time and part time study options in FE and HE.
- better funding for postgraduate study.

8. Consumer Protection
- increase the penalties for unsolicited phone calls and email from businesses.
- increase the penalties for junk mail.
- ban anti-consumer practices (like the apparent requirement from Sky for people to cancel contracts by telephone, which falls foul of the Equality Act anyway, but is fundamentally objectionable as a misuse of power by a business in dealings with individual customers, oh and the practice of retailers using couriers (who don't have collection points that are the equivalent of local delivery offices) rather than the Royal Mail without giving people the option to choose).
- require banks to staff call centres with people who are competent to advise customers, including a sufficient command of English to talk through the issues people call their banks about.

9. Employment
- introduce a minimum wage for 13-16 year olds.
- financial incentives to employers who offer flexible working practices [why shouldn't [most] people take an hour out during the working day to see their GP? I realise lots of job roles can't accommodate this, but those that can should be encouraged to, to reduce the demand for routine things to need to be done out of hours]
- general requirement to give [full time] employees two consecutive days off each week (with some exceptions where needed in particular fields & ability for employees to opt out), which should be Saturday and Sunday unless otherwise agreed (Jewish employees might prefer Friday and Saturday, others might prefer Monday and Tuesday).

10. Equality
- make it a criminal offence to shout/scream in public places without a reasonable excuse. Can't work out how to protect political speech, which is very important with the necessary cultural change to put an end to men thinking it's OK to shout at women in the street about their appearance etc.
- create a new protected characteristic called something like "size" or "body size" to prohibit discrimination against people on the basis of height and weight and other variations in body size/structure.
- create another new protected characteristic called "children" to prohibit discrimination against children except where there is reasonable justification for discriminating against children.
- extend the duty to make reasonable adjustments, which currently applies only to disability to include pregnancy and maternity and also body size and children and additionally to cover temporary disabilities.
- introduce temporary blue badges (for broken legs etc).
- introduce a *voluntary* national system for registering disability that leads to an ID card that someone could use to prove disability without necessarily having to disclose lots of personal information when that's not needed.
- improve availability of overnight childcare

11. Health
- end the 'wars' on drugs and obesity. [no wars on abstract nouns ever again]
- decriminalise most drugs, introduce quality control and tax on sales. [willing to accept some drugs are too harmful to do that with, but think as many as possible should be legalised]
- improve the way the NHS deals with people with chronic and overlapping health conditions.
- better health education at school around caring for ill people - not talking here about first aid, though that's important, but about recognising that people can be ill and need care, but don't necessarily need to see a GP.
- check what behaviours are being incentivised with targets eg. targets to offer GP appts in 48 hours lead to surgeries not allowing people to book appts in advance and remove incentives that are counter productive to good health care.
- require the diet industry to publish failure rates [ie. sustainability of weight loss over a period of years]
- introduce a register of Advance Decisions
- provide voluntary parenting classes at an early stage (ie. you can go to one before anyone's suggested there's a problem with your parenting).

12. Immigration
- Encourage it.
- Encourage the provision of English lessons to immigrants who don't speak English fluently.

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Hayfever and sunglasses and rucksacks

2015-03-22T22:44:00Z

Hello world, first public post in ages.

Hayfever and sunglasses

I have suffered from hayfever for years, and have been aware that one of the recommendations to stop pollen getting to your eyes is to wear wrap around sunglasses. It's hard to get prescription lenses in wrap around sunglasses because of the shape of the lenses, so when you look in standard opticians you don't tend to see many wrap around frames. I am a full time glasses wearing person, so normal sunglasses aren't an option.

At the end of last year I finally worked my way round it (I think with help from commenters here) at a reasonable-ish price.

I ordered these frames then used that company's recommended reglazers, Ciliary Blue to have the lenses in the glasses replaced with tinted prescription lenses. I now have prescription sun glasses, in a wrap around frame for about £95, which while not being as cheap as some ways of getting prescription sunglasses, isn't IMO, bad, given that some places I'd been looking were advertising sunglasses at £300-£400.

Rucksacks

Somebody on LJ pointed me at Dakine as a brand of rucksacks that are hardwearing and are a bit more interesting than plain black but with patterns that aren't out of place in an office, rather than ones that are more obviously designed for walking or camping. I now have one that I'm liking a lot.

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Banks, identity theft and social engineering

2014-06-15T13:26:19Z

One of the things that keeps us safe from fraud/identity theft/other crimes of deception is the ability to think "wow there, something's not right here" and act on that feeling that something isn't right and at least needs further investigation.

Banks seem to be going out of their way to undermine people's ability to keep themselves safe, by behaving in ways that replicate the behaviour of those who are trying to take advantage of us. They phone us and ask us to confirm security information. When we phone them they ask us for security information before they even know what question it is we want to ask (it might be "what time does the branch in $foo close on a Saturday?" - they don't need to know who is asking that question!). They send us text messages from numbers that cannot be verified online - how am I supposed to trust that a text message apparently containing details of my transactions is genuine when there is nothing to link that mobile number to the bank in their contact details page of their website?

So no, banks:

1. You do not telephone me and ask me to confirm who I am. Ever. Bad practice. I won't do so, I will hang up and report the call to you, on a number I can verify as belonging to you, as a potential fraud.

2. I will avoid dealing with you by telephone whenever possible, because it is so fucking frustrating. I don't ask clients who phone me at work to prove they are who they say they are before I'll talk to them! You could make the process much less frustrating by employing staff who speak English to the standard of a native speaker and by not asking security questions until you know someone wants information about their own accounts.

3. Publish your contact information. All of it. If a text message claims to come from you, I should be able to verify it.

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Election material

2014-05-22T12:19:17Z

This year I have:

1 x leaflet from the Conservative party = 0 spelling errors.
1 x leaflet from the English Democrats = 0 spelling errors. I am an agnostic atheist who is British, not English and Christian and find this leaflet borderline offensive.
1 x leaflet from the Green Party = 0 spelling errors.
1 x leaflet from the Labour Party = 0 spelling errors, far too many annoying cliches in the first paragraph, focused on next year's general election rather than this year's European election.
4 x leaflets from the Liberal Democrats, two addressed to me, the other two not = 0 spelling errors, but dubious mix of fonts within both leaflets, which duplicated each other a lot, rather than one expanding on the other. The third document was set out in the form of a letter addressed to me - they could have done with printing something on the back. The forth paradies the UKIP/Conservative/Labour leaflets.
1 x leaflet from No2EU = 0 spelling errors, correct use of an apostrophe, content incorrect [I simply don't believe that public services are being privatised within the EU because of EU legislation]
2 x leaflet from UKIP = 0 spelling errors. Elides the difference between the EU and the ECHR in a naughty fashion. [One of my pet peeves - the ECHR was drafted by Brits (and others) shortly after the end of the second world war - the jurisprudence of the ECtHR grew up around what was the EEC and became the EU, but is separate from it]. Clever of them to include a window poster within their leaflet though.

Given the lack of spelling errors [normally a feature of local election leaflets], I suspect this material has been prepared centrally by the parties, rather than by local parties.

None of the material has altered by original plan to vote Liberal Democrat though.

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Names and identity

2014-04-18T11:00:43Z

I have been of the opinion, since I was around 11 or 12 or so that my name is my name and I will never change it. My name is a key part of my personal/individual identity [I get that this isn't the case for other people, who see names as things binding them to particular parts of their closer family]. I spent my childhood dealing with the disadvantages of a name others couldn't pronounce or spell (certainly primary school teachers of mine would spell it incorrectly and tell me I was wrong when I corrected them) or would make fun of. It was reasonably clear then that it was unusual/an identifying feature and as an adult and particularly with the creation/expansion of the internet, a name that isn't easily muddled for someone else is one hell of an advantage to have.

Other people have different views/experiences on this, which they're perfectly entitled to have, where names are perhaps a more fluid part of identity, connecting people with close parts of their family of origin or to a particular partner or to their family of choice and the bit of family they are most connected with changes over time. Other people use different names in different parts of their lives - a name for work and a name for home. I suspect there's considerable influence on some people's choices by institutionalised sexism, but you don't deal with that by removing or discouraging particular choices.

My main complaint here is not what people choose to call themselves in different times/different places, it's that systems/structures are not in place to reflect what people are choosing to do in terms of names. With some obvious exceptions, most of the time people who have altered their names want to be findable by both old and new name (or both home name and work name) or by a number of different names all at the same time and social media is not geared up for this. It expects people to have one name only. The same is true of things like passports (GB driving licences at least provide space on the paper counterpart for alternative signatures) - why can't passports and driving licences show someone's current preferred name and then give a list of previous names/also current names?

A lot of the problems that come with changing names (think serious professional ones, like publication records for academics and more mundane ones, like trying to cash a cheque addressed in the wrong name, the administration and paperwork involved in changing your name) primarily affect women, because it tends to be more women than men who alter their names could be avoided if we set up systems to explicitly recognise that Mrs Bloggs is also Miss Jones and that Miss Jones is still one of her names, even if she now prefers to be addressed as Mrs Bloggs, so colleagues, at the level of acquaintances she's not dealt with for some years can still find her on LinkedIn and she can cash cheques made payable to either name. Systems are easier to alter than human behaviour, so why not adapt systems that work better for current trends?

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Disk partitioning

2013-06-11T22:02:10Z

Google isn't being a very good friend at the moment.

Does anyone know how I can alter the size of partitions of a hard drive on a computer? There are two partitions at the moment, one is very small and contains Windows and other software stuff and I want to make it bigger as there's only 9% free space on it. The other contains lots of unused space.

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Twitter - Android client

2013-05-06T20:10:20Z

I've been using TweetCaster as an Android client for Twitter for ages and generally like it, but it's now taken to showing me retweets from people from whom I've unsubscribed from retweets. This is a minor annoyance, but one that is sufficiently annoying that I want to find an Android client that doesn't do this.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Edit - I'm happy to use a paid for app. I read enough Twitter that it's worthwhile spending money to get an app I like.

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Baroness Thatcher

2013-04-08T18:30:38Z

I wrote about today back in 2005.

I've already unfollowed about four people on Facebook and one on Twitter for suggesting her death is something to be celebrated. I'll keep doing that. *shrugs*. I feel very strongly indeed that:

(a) death is not something to be celebrated, ever [sometimes it's a relief]
(b) there's no good reason to be insulting a newly dead person. The insults can wait for a couple of months.
(c) how we treat and talk about the dead is important.

I see *celebration* of her death and insults directed at her as an ethical failing; a lack of compassion and of respect. [Disagreeing with her politics is an entirely different matter.].

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BiCon - may as well/lemming

2011-09-06T00:38:15Z

Have a post with screened comments, should you want to say anything to me post BiCon/for any other reason.

Will unscreen unless you say otherwise/the contents obviously shouldn't be public.

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Appropriate use of bins

2011-08-22T18:35:43Z

Yesterday evening, I went out to bring the blue (recycling) bin in and take the black (landfill) bin out. I discovered a red sticker had been placed on my bin indicating that the bin men had refused to empty it as it contained non-recyclable items.

I dug into the bin, removed the coat hangers, someone had placed there, noticed there was a beef burger in a bun and then began to see the cigarette butts. Lots and lots of damp, smelly, cigarette butts, someone had decided the appropriate place to dispose of was my reycling bin. FFS.

Why do people do that sort of thing? There were lots of black bins in the same place as my blue bin and I cannot conceive of a recycling scheme that might accept cigarette butts for recycling. Surely, if you're going to use someone else's bin, because it's convenient, you at least have the courtesy to pick the correct kind of bin for your rubbish?

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Policial rambling

2011-04-01T19:01:02Z

Feeling both that I disagree with a lot of the policital points being made and the means of making them within online circles of people I know whilst also seeking approval from others. The two don't go together. I've misplaced whatever it is that enables me to be a good lone voice or a good dissenting view. So, in an attempt to find some of that again:-

1. I think public spending cuts are inevitable in the current economic climate.

2. I don't agree with where some of the cuts are falling as there seems to be a disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable in society.

3. Whilst I agree that everyone (companies and people) should pay the tax they owe, I consider that it's an enormous oversimplification of several different issues to suggest that unpaid tax from particular large corporations magically fixes the national debt or removes the need for public spending reductions.

4. I agree people have the right to protest by marching through the streets if they want. But I'm pissed off at the justifications I'm seeing for damaging property. No, it's not OK. And beyond that, I find it very hard to understand why people put themselves in harms way like this to make this particular point. If we know the police will use 'kettling' and we can reasonably assume within a very large event that there will be small groups of people out to cause trouble, then why join a protest march?

5. I'm reasonably happy with the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition so far. [There are individual decisions I would criticise, but over all they're not bad].

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Flushing toilets

2011-03-07T12:55:23Z

Before I spend money calling a plumber.... there is currently a hammer sitting on my toilet to aid with flushing it as it is not flushing well and has to be pumped with a hammer to get it to flush.

I can't work out how to take the cistern lid off. I have a dual flush system with buttons flat on the top of the cistern. I have already:

*cut through the grouting holding it to the wall behind it

*taken the metal coverings off the buttons on the toilet.

Under the metal buttons are two pieces of plastic, each connected to a short spring down to a further circular metal base. I can't currently work out how to take the plastic off the springs (if you're meant to do that) or how to take the springs out of their holes so I can get to the bit beneath the springs.

There's got to be a way of lifting the cistern lid off and I'm finding my inability to work it out frustrating. Anybody got any ideas?

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Car buying

2010-10-08T20:14:17Z

Am thinking quite seriously about buying a car again. I am becoming less enthuastic about cycling in this weather and it's only autumn - we've not yet reached winter/properly dark mornings. I don't (whatever the 'ought to's are) see this changing. And what's happening at the minute is that I'm taking cabs to and from work a lot, which means I'm tied to ordering a cab for a specific time and leaving at that time (assuming the company can supply me with one when I want one).

Stuff I want to know about cars:

Am I right in thinking that finance deals offered by car selling places are generally very bad value and that it's better to borrow money elsewhere and pay cash?

Is it possible to pay for a car on a credit card?

How long should I expect to be able to keep a car in good working order for? If I buy a car now should I be expecting to replace it in 5/10 years time?

What's the best trade off between cars made in the UK and cars made elsewhere with expensive replacement parts? ie. how do I weigh up the expense of replacement parts vs. potentially greater reliability?

I see road fund duty is for cars after 2001 based on CO2 emissions with a different table for 2001-2009 cars and a new one for post 2010 cars. How much emphasis should I put on low CO2 emissions vs. other stuff? We can't predict govt policy, but would it be reasonable to assume that the trend towards taxing the more polluting cars more heavily will continue and thus buying something with low emissions is a good plan? [trying to give that appropriate weight vs. the attempt at making myself feel less bad for joining the car owning masses 'cos 'my car doesn't cause much pollution']

What is good performance in terms of miles per gallon?

What is best practice in terms of winter/summer tyres? Can you buy snow chains in the UK? What other sorts of safety equipment belong in a car [on my list already: fire extinguisher, first aid kit, hammer for breaking windows/seatbelt slicing, jack, spare tyre, flourescent jacket, kitchen roll]

What's your magic piece of equipment in a car? [context: I'm trying to think about what sort of things I should think about asking a garage to fit before I buy a car from them - I don't know what sorts of things these might be - maybe strategically placed drinks holders? hands free kit? etc]

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Internet bookmarks

2010-10-05T21:59:29Z

X marks will close fairly soon. Does anyone have any personal recommendations for bookmarking stuff either firefox plug ins or otherwise. Criteria:

* I don't want to change browser, I like Firefox
* I don't want something aimed at sharing bookmarks with other people

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Lemming

2010-09-01T09:01:47Z

Since everyone else is doing it and I see no particular reason not to, if you have stuff you want to say to me in a screened comment, go ahead in this post. I've never worked out why people like these things rather than email, but there we go. I don't care if it's stuff about BiCon (maybe you didn't find me to talk to me about something?) or other stuff (maybe there's stuff I write about I've failed to give context for or similar).

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