A week or two ago I was force-fed the news that Alex Jones (a BBC TV presenter) was pregnant at the age of 39. My thoughts at the time were a very vague and nondescript mixture of “so what”, “39 isn’t old”, and “good luck to her”. Stuff like that.
Given the choice, I probably wouldn’t have thought about it again. Mind you, I wouldn’t have thought about it the first time if I’d been given the choice there, either. But then I was force-fed with some more “news” about her today. It seems that the BBC with its master plan to outlaw the condition of being male, has already given her a new show about fertility.
Ms Jones has been pregnant all of five minutes, and she is already an absolute and complete expert on the subject, telling us not to judge older women as selfish career hunters when they wait to have kids.
It’s funny. Two weeks ago, the possibility that Alex Jones was a “selfish career woman” hadn’t entered my head. But now, I can’t get it out of my head that Alex Jones IS a selfish career woman as she harangues us about age and fertility for her new show.
I saw this story on the BBC website. It’s one of those that brings a tear to the eye.
Fidencio Sanchez is 89 years old. He had only been retired for a few weeks from his ice-cream selling business when his only daughter died and he became guardian to her two children. His wife, who also sold ice-cream, was forced to retire due to ill health. Consequently, he came out of retirement and began selling ice cream again. He works from “early” until 8pm. He’s 89, for God’s sake. The same age as my dad – and he shouldn’t have to be doing this.
Joel Cervantes Macias was passing by and saw him. He took this picture, which then appeared online, and then went viral. A friend (Joe Loera) suggested an online fundraiser – which had a target of $3,000.
They exceeded that within an hour. It currently stands at more than $200,000. And Joel and Joe prove that there is hope while the world still has people like them.
You can make a donation directly from the fundraiser page here.
The Brexit campaign has officially dumped its pre-referendum claim that leaving the EU would immediately free up £350,000,000 for the NHS. Irrespective of retrospective semantics, that’s what they were telling the monkey-with-the-vote on the run up.
Meanwhile, the GBP remains 10% down on its pre-referendum level (notwithstanding a handful of biased news reports announcing its “recovery” every time it goes up by a few tenths of a US cent, even though those are invariably followed by a similar fall).
You will recall (unless you were one of the prats taken in by it) that this £350m which was used to pay for our EU membership would immediately be freed up and channelled into the NHS instead if you voted Brexit. This, along with the implied promise of ritual bonfires containing millions of immigrants, was enough to secure your vote.
How cheaply that was bought in the end, eh? Both claims were totally wrong, and you fell for it.
I saw an amazing piece of nonsensical gobbledegook in this BBC science story, which is in turn based on the amazingly biased writings of a “professor” of extremely soft subjects at a university which has incredibly low entry standards, and which comes 45th in the current University League Table. Apparently, “new research” – that’s layman’s science-speak for “we put some easily obtainable data into a spreadsheet and pressed a button” – shows that drivers aged 70+ are involved in 3-4 times fewer accidents than 17-21 year olds.
The fun part is that the “research” was done by a “professor of gerontology” at Swansea University’s “Centre for Innovative Ageing”, and was presented at the “British Science Festival” (with a very poor website), which is being held in… yes, you guessed it. Swansea. Oh, and “gerontology” means:
So there’s no bias, then. Reading between the lines, it would appear that the “conclusions” were made by a guy who specialises in philanthropic studies relating to old people in order to prove that said old people were not a risk on the road. Somehow, the following disconnected conclusions were drawn, but portrayed as being inherently related to each other:
older people are not dangerous drivers
drivers aged 70+ have fewer accidents than 17-21 year old men (see what they did there?)
older drivers make most mistakes when turning right and overtaking
young men drive too fast and lose control whereas older drivers drive more slowly (see, what they did again?)
dangerous driving “is not generally an issue for older people”
older drivers are more likely to be involved in accidents than the safest 40-50 year olds
older drivers are “less likely than very young drivers to be involved in accidents”
older drivers make mistakes when they felt under pressure from other road users
17-21 year old men are the most accident prone
17-21 year old men are 3-4 times more likely to have an accident than 70 year olds
those over 75 show an increase in accident involvement due to failing faculties
older and younger drivers are involved in different types of accidents
young men are most likely to be involved in single vehicle accidents (i.e. lose control, hit a tree)
older drivers have smaller impact collisions (i.e. fence, wall, kerb, other peoples’ cars)
older women are more likely to have “small accidents” when doing tight manoeuvres (so, just like younger women, then)
older people are most likely to be involved in accidents involving other older drivers
older drivers compensate for declining skills by driving slower, leaving bigger gaps, and only going out when it is quieter (i.e. weekends)
Unbelievably, this muddled up tosh was presented at a so-called science festival. I suspect delegates then split into groups, and went away to make models out of papier mâché, dried macaroni, and glitter sprinkles to represent what they had learnt.
We already know – and have known for many years – that the 17-24 year old male group has more accidents. It’s why their insurance is so high. We also already know that this is down to lack of experience and lack of various biologically-controlled emotional restraints which only become fully matured in the mid-20s. We know that this male age group generally likes to drive fast and show off, and that they are therefore more likely to lose control. We could get colloquial and add that it is because they are generally arseholes. And we might also add that – in spite of not mentioning it one way or the other in the “research” – plenty of young females are at least as bad. And this has absolutely zero bearing on whether or not older drivers are “safe” drivers. The two issues are not connected in any way whatsoever. Both details might be true, but they are completely independent of each other. No one has ever… EVER… claimed that older people purposely drive like maniacs, whereas that’s the precise accusation levelled at younger drivers.
The “research” is therefore absolutely right that older drivers don’t drive like younger ones. It might also have told us that fire is hot, and water is wet. However, it seems to deliberately avoid the far more serious issue of older drivers tending to drive badly because they can’t do it any other way.
Something that is apparent is that there isn’t much breathing space between supposedly “safe” 70 year olds and 75 year olds, who the research admits do have more accidents simply due to their age. It naively ventures into very dangerous non-PC territory by identifying older female drivers as being poor at manoeuvres (you’re only supposed to say good things about women by default, then recommend that they be given executive jobs in large corporations or in government).
The article then brings out the usual emotional claptrap about independence, freedom, and mobility – and the obvious inference that risking other people’s lives means less than risking the loss of an old person’s ability to drive. The comedian – sorry, the “professor” – who has come up with all this suggests that in order to deal with older drivers’ inability to turn right properly (i.e. their poor judgement skills), there should be dedicated filter lanes or wider roads to help them! Or, in other words, he wants to fix a problem he has just done “research” on and concluded doesn’t exist.
Just imagine this, for a moment – and try to think about it objectively. You give a phone app to a group of people who suffer pain as a result of some ailment so they can provide feedback about how they feel at any given moment. Talking about their aches and pains is quite probably their favourite (and only) discussion subject. Many of them will be the type where if you say to them “I’ve got a cold, and feel terrible” will immediately inform you that they feel worse. Or, if you foolishly ask them how they feel, will tell you about things they wouldn’t have otherwise deemed worth mentioning because they’re incapable of setting a personal baseline.
Give these people a brightly-coloured app – I saw it on the news, and it is brightly-coloured and simplistic – and ask them to tell you how they feel after the slightest twinge, and you have created the most biased and subjective bank of data imaginable.
You’ve got to love Apple sometimes (and I mean that in a jocular sense). They’ve just released the iPhone 7, which has had the fortunate (for Samsung) effect of shifting attention away from the saga of the exploding Galaxy Note 7s. However, keen to innovate everything to death as always, they have caused a bit of a stir by removing the headphone jack.
To be fair to Apple, the problems being suggested aren’t as bad as they’re being made out to be in the media. The iPhone 7 is supplied with a set of wired earphones (or “EarPods”) which connect to the Lightning port, a Lightning to USB cable, and a Lightning to 3.5mm stereo jack adapter (so you can use your existing earphones). The Lightning socket is an Apple invention dating back to 2012. All the media stories I’ve read have missed these details, and have suggested Apple is forcing people to buy its premium AirPod earphones.
Apple’s head of marketing, Phil Schiller, has come out with probably the most arrogant and typically Apple statement imaginable, and described the decision to lose the 3.5mm jack as “courageous”. The tech world seems to be split on this – well, when I say “split”, it’s more like a small piece torn off the corner – with the vast majority seeing it as a cynical attempt to make money and a doomed venture based on poor logic.
From the money perspective, people don’t have to buy AirPods and, as I’ve already said (but no one else seems to be), the iPhone 7 can still output to 3.5mm jack earphones and headphones using the supplied adapter. Apple’s gear has always been overpriced, and at £159 AirPods are no exception. But even if the whole Apple fanboi user base bought them, I couldn’t see it making much difference to Apple’s bottom line – not when you consider that a new iPhone 7 is going to set you back £600 or £700 depending on the model. So yes, it is somewhat cynical, but nowhere near as much as it would have been if users had had no choice but to buy AirPods. The real problem is all to do with Apple’s logic on this matter.
You see, not that long ago, if a pair of headphones slipped off your head there was a good chance they’d shatter a coffee table or injure the Labrador. This would have been true whether they were wired or wireless, because they were bloody big things with proper speaker coils inside them. They may also have contained a couple of Duracells, and wired types would have sported a cable strong enough to hold down an elephant. More recently, though, technology has improved significantly and headphones – especially earphones – have become so small that the cotton-thin wires used to connect them to equipment provides additional functionality as a location device and a tether to stop them from falling into toilets or down drains. If an earbud were to fall out – which they frequently do – it would simply dangle around your neck until you shoved it back in your ear, and if you dropped the whole shebang as you ran across a field, the bright red or white cable would be visible from 100m or more. Take the wire away, though, and you’ve got two small things each the size of a broad bean which you’ll probably never see again. This is essentially what Apple has created with AirPods.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the physically small size means a similarly physically small power source. Weighing in against that, AirPods contain what Apple refers to as a microprocessor, and this is needed to collect data from built-in optical sensors, accelerometers, and microphones, and to provide the functionality above and beyond just playing music. In fact, AirPods come across as being the aural equivalent of Google Glass. Without the dangle-round-your-neck safety feature, these delicate electronic units are likely to find themselves coming into contact with hard floors from heights of up to 2 metres if they slip out – possibly with a little extra momentum (not to mention dirt and water) thrown in if the wearer is a jogger. Apple claims a 5-hour talk time, which in real world English probably equates to 3-4 hours – and this is with factory-fresh batteries. After a few dozen charge/discharge cycles this will likely deteriorate to 1.5-2.5 hours. Knowing how the typical iPhone user uses earphones (i.e. 18 hours a day, 365 days a year), most will start to experience a substantial reduction in talk time within a few months. Naturally, in something so small, there isn’t a slide compartment where you can replace batteries, so when the battery dies so does the AirPod. And they cost £159, remember.
Quite simply, wired earphones are about as perfect as you can get as far as the basic design goes. The wire is important, and getting rid of it is therefore a major change which requires a major shift in battery technology to work out properly. And let’s not forget that AirPods are typically Apple – designed to be seen. They are released in October, and I predict AirPod related muggings will start around the same time.
I stress once more that iPhone 7 buyers will still have the (for Apple) rather inelegant as standard option of plugging in normal earphones or headphones via an adapter cable. AirPods, though, have all the hallmarks of being too far ahead of their time – just like how the first mobile phones had to be connected to batteries the size of briefcases, or how current electric cars have extremely limited mileage range per charge. Until they can go a full day on a single charge – and until someone finds a way of making them stay put – users are likely to become disillusioned very quickly.
A bad accident happened in Penge, London, a few days ago when a car being chased by police crashed into pedestrians and killed two people. It’s always a little bit surreal when you see lives end like this – and that includes that of Joshua Dobby, the 23-year old driver who is “accused” of the crime. Still, better that he’s kept off the streets than put back on them.
What bugged me, though, was how when the story was reported on the radio and media. They had some stupid (“shocked and appalled”) woman being interviewed pronouncing “Penge” like it rhymed with “Benjy”. Then, the newsreader started doing it as well.
Thankfully, the media realised that even if a handful of dickwads do pronounce it that way, it’s best to do it properly, and they’re now reporting it so it rhymes with “henge” – the way it should do.
Over the last month or so, whenever I was picking a pupil up from Top Valley, it had been noticeable that a bunch of travellers (aka in colloquial terms, “gypsies”) had infested a playing field up that way.
Now, I know there will be do-gooders out there who resent the use of the term “gypsy”, citing that it is the correct name for the Romani people emanating from Central and Eastern Europe. Actually, its legal meaning includes New Age Travellers, Irish Travellers, and “persons of nomadic habit of life, whatever their race or origin, but does not include members of an organised group of travelling showmen, or persons engaged in travelling circuses, travelling together as such.” So there.
The kind I’m talking about, though, are filthy vermin who require a major clean-up operation after they’ve been kicked off land they have often broken into, quite probably by cutting down hedges, or breaking fences or locks (unless the Council had been stupid enough not to erect a strong barrier to prevent their purulent ingress in the first place). I’m citing real examples from around here, by the way, in case those do-gooders I mentioned are still on the case.
The mob who have just been kicked off the playing fields in Top Valley simply moved a few hundred yards to a field off Beckhampton Road, and now the idiot Council has got to go through the whole two-plus week saga of having them evicted again. Earlier this year they fouled up a field in West Bridgford. In the past they have infested fields close to my home. Wherever they go, reports of crime increase. All they do is scuttle from place to place like the vermin they are. It is obvious that they had already cased the new joint and organised a new hole to retreat to the second they left the previous location. They all own flat bed trucks of the kind used to effect minor road repairs and driveway upgrades.
As usual. they are “demanding” a permanent site. I would suggest this location: 48.535250, -14.550861 (paste it into Google Maps). No sensible or respectable member of society is going to be happy having these living anywhere near them. And nor should any council expect them to be.
What prompted me to write this was a couple of quotes from/about these people.
One of the travellers, Patrick Ward, told BBC Radio Nottingham’s Pip Watts they were using the Southglade Leisure Centre for showers and toilets.
Yeah, and I’ll bet Southglade stays open all night and on weekends, and that these “respectable” travellers just hold it in otherwise. And their kids – they always have loads of kids – won’t soil a nappy when the place is shut. For every traveller who has a chemical toilet, and who pays to have it emptied professionally, there are hundreds who don’t. And none of them carry bin bags away with them – they just leave their mess wherever it falls.
He said he had tried to live in a house in Bulwell with his family for a year but he “felt too enclosed” and moved back outside.
Sorry, Pat, but that’s no reason for people who don’t have your obvious emotional problems to have to put up with your odious presence. Particularly when you are not the only one in your pack, and no matter how good you are (or profess to be), you’re only as good as the worst of your number.
The simple fact is that these people shit in every corner of any field they occupy. You can see them going into the bushes to do it (when we had them, all the footpaths were fouled with it). They leave bin bags full of nappies and other filth when they go not to mention old baths, bikes, car parts/tyres, and other ridiculous items of junk. And they don’t pay to have it removed – we do. So they’re hardly the hard-done-by angels our friend Pat implies.
I noticed recently that a few caravans have set up on the green near Clifton Village. So far, there’s only about three – but just watch them multiply like fungus. They did last time they camped there.
I’m referring to drug companies, after reading this “extraordinary commercial response” from Mylan (that’s their own self-glorious rhetoric, by the way) in dealing with a series of obscene price rises for a live-saving product they acquired.
For anyone who doesn’t know, an EpiPen is a device used by people with severe allergies to give themselves a shot of epinephrine/adrenaline if they ever have an anaphylactic attack. It is a sterile ampoule of the drug with a spring loaded needle, and is based on devices developed by the American army to treat nerve gas attacks quickly. In short, it saves lives.
The EpiPen was first marketed in the mid-70s. It has been successively owned/part-owned/marketed and generally thrown around by various large pharma companies. Mylan got their hooks into it in 2007. Every time anyone else develops something even remotely similar, it seems that they’re sued to hell and back, and it’s so bad that any attempt to save someone having an anaphylactic attack without using an EpiPen is virtually an infringement of patent. You can read the extremely dark and disturbing history on Wikipedia.
But here’s the worst part. Up until 2007 in the USA, a pack of two EpiPens cost around $100 (note that they have a 12-month shelf life, so a user would be looking at spending the same amount each year just so they always had a back up). Even that price was bad enough, since only about $1 of drug is contained in each EpiPen. However, largely following a push by Mylan the market share of the EpiPen rose higher and higher. In spite of selling more and more units, Mylan increased the price successively, passing $265 in 2013, $461 in 2015, and more recently to and absolutely obscene $609 (it has gone up by 500% since Mylan acquired it in 2007).
Laughably, Mylan’s cheaper generic version which they are touting costs a “mere” $300. Just a reminder that it delivers $1-worth of drug. Indeed, you can purchase a 1ml ampoule of epinephrine for about $5 retail.
If you take a look on Amazon, auto-injector pens for Insulin cost around £40 (just over $50) for all-singing-and-dancing models with electronic memories. The EpiPen is a cheap plastic throwaway device. Mylan has no excuse whatsoever for the price it is asking Americans to pay.
It’s understandable that pharma companies charge high prices for brand new medicines because it costs many millions of pounds/dollars to develop them. It is also understandable that medicines which have a fairly low user base are also more expensive. But sometimes, the price asked is just too much – especially when it is hiked from an established low price to a much higher one, usually following the purchase of the marketing rights by a no-name company. Many years ago my mother asked me to buy her a tube of special ointment which she had previously been prescribed. It was available through the pharmacy and didn’t actually need a prescription – except that a small 5ml tube retailed at £45. She went to the doctor to get it instead. But this was chickenfeed compared to some of the borderline criminal pricing that goes on.
A few years ago there was an outcry when Martin Shkreli, CE of Turing Pharmaceuticals, raised the price of Daraprim from an established price of under $14 per tablet to $750. Daraprim was suitably “hot” in that is was used to treat certain conditions associate with HIV/AIDS, and before Shkreli could be lynched outright for this particular situation, he was indicted for fraud on unrelated issues (note: only “unrelated” in the legal sense, since there was clearly a link in terms of Shkreli’s morals).
Rodelis Therapeutics acquired Cycloserine, used to treat drug-resistant tuberculosis. They immediately raised the price from $500 for 30 tablets to $10,800.
Valeant Pharmaceuticals acquired heart drugs Isuprel and Nitropress and promptly increased the price of Isuprel by 525% and Nitropress by 212%.
Marathon has raised the prices of various drugs it acquired from others by a factor of four.
Doxycycline is a tetracycline antibiotic. It cost as little as $4.30 for 30 tablets in 2012. By early 2013 it was sitting at $165 for the same amount. A bottle of doxycycline was around $20 in late 2013 and yet it was $1,849 by April 2014. Mylan appears to be involved in this one again.
In the UK it can be just as stupid. Paracetamol tablets cost as little as 14p for 16 tablets (0.88p per tablet) retail. Certain companies who manufacture them, and who sell them as branded items, have asked up to 75p for 16 tablets (4.69p per tablet) and even now ask 50p. The NHS is paying between two and twenty times the lowest retail price, depending on which news source you believe. And yet all paracetamol tablets labelled as “Paracetamol BP 500mg” are identical (even if they’re labelled “caplets” they’re still essentially the same and very cheap to make). Although it has been a long time since I was involved, you can believe me when I say that the cost price of each tablet/caplet is tiny. Even 14p for a tub of 16 is profitable except to dinosaur companies with ridiculous overheads.
Instructors’ favourite whinge at the moment is test waiting times. In Nottingham, a test booked anytime now (August) would be in mid-December, and the same story repeats across the country.
In Nelson, near Burnley, they still have one of those silly little test centres. It has three parking bays and DVSA has recently upped the number of examiners there to six to try and improve waiting time. They’re apparently not too smart in Nelson, and so it is important to point out that six is a bigger number than three. Furthermore, the office there is crumbling, and the ladies’ toilets are often out of order. As everyone is no doubt aware, having the gents lavatory out of order is one thing, but the ladies’… that’s almost punishable by death. Therefore, DVSA is looking at closing down the current Nelson test centre and relocating to a better place.
Heaven forbid that the new test centre location should be 6km (4 miles) away in Burnley – somewhere big enough to have been heard of. Or which includes driving on big roads or the bay park exercise.
DVSA hasn’t said anything about a new location yet, but if this story is anything to go by, the local ADIs and Andrew Stephenson, MP for Pendle are already kicking up a fuss over it. Stephenson fears it will be “moved out of Pendle” – which obviously means “to Burnley”. If you look it up, Pendle is a district just north of Burnley, the northern reaches of which are three times more distant from Nelson than Burnley is! In fact, many Pendle learners most probably go to Skipton for their tests, because it’s nearer.
DVSA has no logical reason to specifically maintain a centre in Nelson with Burnley being so close. It has every reason to want a bigger location which can conduct more tests and all the manoeuvres, and which may or may not be in Nelson.
It’s just strikes me as funny that ADIs want shorter waiting times, but oppose anything which might achieve that depending on which head they’ve got on.
