Righteous Rant

I love books, anyone that has been following my blogs will know that one of my main loves in life is books. I love the way they feel, I love to be able to run my fingers over the pages and the tactile sensation of the paper. I love the slight roughness of the pages of a novel and I glory in the sensual quality of the pages in craft books, all glossy and smooth, it's a delicious sensation. I love the way a new book smells and that crinkling sound of the paper when I  turn the pages in a novel or the slight cracking sound as the spine gives way when you first open it. I adore the shushing sound of glossy pages as they give way for the first time as they slightly stick together when you pull them apart. The weight of a book in my hands is a special thing, it has substance and solidity that's so real.

So for me deciding to go paperless is a big thing,  giving up those delights in favour of being more "eco-efficient" feels like a big sacrifice. So having bought an iPad and installed the kindle apps I thought ok this is the time to bite the bullet and "do the right thing".

So imagine my annoyance when surfing through Amazon and the Apple store I find that going eco friendly is actually more expensive than continuing to purchase books the traditional way!!!! 

I don't actually get it,  it does not compute in my head.  I will, by buying digitally, no longer have a beloved book in my hands,  I will not be using paper, not killing a tree, not contributing to the carbon footprint of the "book" so why then should I pay more for the privilege?

Perhaps I was foolish in thinking that it would be cheaper to buy digitally as it has been in the case of music but it's not. At least with a traditional book it is possible to share the book or sell it on or give it away... This isn't possible with digital versions.   

So for the time being I think as eco unfriendly as it may be I will stick to buying my books in paper format. I don't see why I should give up the pleasure I find in real books if there isn't even the incentive of saving money. 

Rant concluded :)

Time to Rant - Politicians

There are few things in this world that are guaranteed to get me riled up and ready to rant than career politicians. (ok that's a porky pie, there's plenty of things)  I don't mean Joe Bloggs, the man/or woman off the street who decides to stand up and be counted and represent their community... I mean the people who come from (in the main) quite privileged backgrounds, who trot off to University and study politics for years and then come straight out of university and go straight into their jobs of "Politician".

Why does this cause me to have a rant, I hear you ask.... well... think of it this way, if you are sick and you need someone to diagnose you, would you go to you MP's surgery to have them diagnose you?  Or would you take yourself off to your GP, someone who has had years of training in medicine, to work out what is wrong with you?  If your car is broken down, do you go and see your MP or do you go and see a mechanic?

Why then do we trust career politicians who have no had any experience of running companies, who have never worked in the NHS, who have no medical training or business training to run as big a company (and don't be fooled, the NHS IS a business) as the NHS? How... exactly.... are career politicians qualified to decide how money should be spent within the NHS, where is their business qualification?  Where is their medical experience and qualifications? What makes them think they know so much better how to run the NHS better than people who have been working in the field for their whole careers?

The latest comical plan by the Conservative Party to reorganise the NHS is just laughable, especially since the current structure of the NHS was initiated by the Tories in the Thatcher years. It's so easy for them to try and palm the blame off onto the last government but we're not all as stupid as the Tories think and some of us were around when they were last in power and remember what they did.  The Tories were the instigators of the endless league tables and beauracracy.  

If the Tories are serious about reorganising the NHS in a way that a) will work and b) is cost effective then really the Career Politicians need to get out of the equation altogether. Bring in people who actually know what they are doing. As much as they would like to blame the NHS's situation on "Management Overload"  They are wrong, management is essential within the NHS, it is a given that, thanks to the Tories, management is top heavy and could use some pruning, but without good management the NHS would fall to pieces, everyone has a role to play, doctors do the doctoring, nurses do the nursing and the management and admin do the boring paperwork and gruntwork that keeps the NHS ticking over.

What makes me so angry is this stupid assumption that reorganisation is the way forward... we're in a recession, wasting £1.5 billion on reorganisation is not only insane it's wasteful and insulting to us, the taxpayers.   People are worried about whether or not they are going to have a job tomorrow, whether or not their children will be able to go to university or even whether or not they will be able to eat and our Government thinks it's ok to throw around £1.5 billion on reorganisation of an institution that they reorganised the last time they were in power...

I guess it is really easy to sit in a protected ivory tower, where you know your job is safe for 5 years and chuck around sound bites and taxpayers money.