The answer to this is apparently, “people & institutions”. In the UK’s case that includes funds managed for things like pensions, whose managers have loaned money to government as a sure fire way of getting it back with interest so they can pay our retiring population.
But when we look at the phrase “retiring population” we find another mass of people who own this “debt” and a lot more besides. I do not mean those people living happily on their Post Office works pension and managing one holiday a year, I mean those people whose ownership of massive wealth – from whatever source – has somehow made them constipated and lazy.

Politicians often talk about the “wealth creators”, they even have the gall to refer to “talented bankers” as belonging to this group, based on the idea that they create wealth for this nation. To the extent that they do pay taxes one can just about see where this argument comes from, but it misses the point of why we appear to be stuck in a flat-lining economy.
If you are a multi-millionaire using your accountants to minimise your tax burden and maximise your profits, perhaps from rapid computerised playing of the stock market, then you are a big part of the problem.
Playing the markets is not “work”,
nor is it “wealth creation”.
Sitting on your millions while masses descend to foodbank stamps is the worst thing for everyone, including the wealthy. It is by failing to make the money move and work that you screw the future of the world outside your window…
What would be work is backing those creative people coming up with new growth industries, service and manufacturing, that employ people – and where we stand a chance of that number of employed people being a growing and significant one.

There is work – there is wealth creation, real wealth made by tax paying workers, not some maths juggling in international bond markets.

Once we have our industries growing, based on solid long term investment, then the optimism that Osborne and co. also like to talk about, is generated by the people with their increased confidence and spending power.
Germany and Iceland have their models of re-strengthening investment, we seem to be unable or unwilling to follow their footsteps. My suspicion is that this is because the constipated wealth hoarders are represented most conspicuously in Her Majesty’s government.
Patrick Mercer is not a rare bad apple, he typifies the idea of easy amoral moneygrabbing.
The 80% of the cabinet who are millionaires could very easily set a different example, by putting some of their own money into the SMEs that the banks and Dragons are failing to support. Hey, they might lose the odd £half million – oooh what a problem, leaving only £5+ million to survive on…
But they might find they are successful, and can feel like useful contributors to our society as they do even better.

Constipated rich people.
these are who we should target for the lobbying previously started by the occupy movement.
Let’s give them the runs.

But why did these crazy semi-literate women appeal to GOP voters in the first place? what did they offer in terms of policies or leadership skills that made them actually be taken seriously by the right wing media?

I think the answer lies in the nature of the right wing media and the GOP constituency who watch (never read) their TV appearances… Much pleasure was expressed at these two women’s appearance, as in, they were not grey haired old men.

and that’s it.

As Tina Fey pointed out with her word for word Palin interview pastiche. These two did not have a single policy or viewpoint that wasn’t self parody of the jaw-dropping kind.

No, the policies may have appealed to those who want to see Elvis wheeled out of area 51 with JFK and Jim Morrison on backing vocals to sing their crudely edited song, “How the fake moon landings did 9/11″, but that’s only the couple of thousand morons who write pro conservative brainstorm-BS on social media and comments pages.

The reason they got the airtime on Faux-News and in other media (many of whom were always in on the joke) was their looks… Politics is supposed to be “show business for ugly people” and while Hillary Goddam Clinton may do her best to fulfil this cliche, Bachmann and Palin actually have good looking actresses doing their satirical portraits.

So yes, she will be missed, due to the different side’s views of entertainment value – but then American politics has been missing a serious set of conservative politicians since Nixon – and he was the last honest one.

Farewell to Bachmann Palin Overdrive – who’ve been helping us see nothing for so long we have forgotten what something might look like.

When on a not too busy 3 lane motorway, where there is just enough traffic in the inside lane going slightly slower than you, in cruise control at, say, 75mph, you may notice a car behind you in the middle lane that seems utterly content to just cruise behind you at your speed. For ages.

There is nothing in the outside lane and no traffic behind for miles. You notice an end to the column of cars and trucks in the inside lane so pull into it. Ninety nine times out of a hundred, the car that was behind you will now overtake you. Something it could have done at any time in the last 5 minutes via the empty outside lane.

The psychology of this is not as middle-lane-moronic as you might think. The result of seeing you cease to be their “guide car” and become a vehicle in the inside lane is enough to tempt even those drivers with cruise control engaged, “I’ll just get past this thing on the left”, being the thinking. 

Of course I’m the kind of driver who on any empty road will take the shortest safe line, which sometimes means driving in the outside lane on a right hand bend while others sit bemused behind me in the inside lane, travelling further for no good reason.

If you think of how far a long distance runner would have to go sticking to the outside lane of a circular running track you can see why I wonder what it is that drives people to drive the long way home on a broad, empty, curved, one way track.  Presumably they see the lanes as something that they should stick to, which is a sad statement of brain dead conformity to a false idea. The other option is that they don’t want to have to use their mirrors or think about driving – in which case they should get the fuck out of the driving seat and get someone in who can manage the job.

Finally I have noticed that of the very many cars driving much too fast and/or stupidly, an extremely high proportion are doing so in BMWs and Audis – It’s like they want to fulfil the cliche that everyone talks about… and now, my brother has bought an Audi and my daughter a BMW

- I am at a loss.

The soft news programme “Cefn gwlad” (Fresh Air) for S4C, regularly employed my limited skills as a sound recordist,  on this occasion in 1987 it was a visit to the animal sanctuary near Llanpumpsaint, Skanda Vale.

The place was called “The community of the many names of God”, and it was a lovely sunny valley setting where the “Swami” explained to us that the animal sanctuary was all part of the philosophy of the Community that celebrated all the religions of the world, while the main aspect was inescapably Hindu.

Among the very tame life, they had a few 28 year old Jersey cows, goats, sheep, a range of ducks, exotic birds, all sorts of animals that were unwanted or rescued. The main attraction was Valli, the orphaned Sri Lankan elephant.

While we were filming this wonderful animal the cameraman noticed that Valli seemed to have an eye for the “Doogal”, the fluffy grey windsock cover for my short gun microphone, we suspect it looked a bit too much like a trunk. He wanted a shot of the elephant in close up and so at his suggestion I moved behind the camera and used a boom pole to dangle the microphone above the lens. Sure enough he got some great shots of her trunk swinging up and around the lens as I rotated the boom, teasing the elephant by withdrawing the mic as she looked to coil her trunk around it.

I was charmed by the place, and the Swami’s explanation of why he had given up his posh boy job and comfortable public school based security to become a monk at this Ashram. We had a cup of tea with the Guru and he wondered allowed if there might be a reason that the film crew had come that was more to do with who was in the crew rather than the finished film. His almost permanent charismatic smile at whoever he was talking to was perhaps one reason why I made up my mind to come back to this place at an early opportunity.

The Easter meditation course they offered in 1988 was a week of hard learning at the Ashram, and during this time I learned many things,

For example –  that Valli the elephant liked banana skins, and so I asked for the chance to take some up to her, the chief cook gave me a few and smiled knowingly. I walked up the fairly steep hill to the specially built Elephant house, at dawn, feet dampened by the dew from the long grass between the path and the tall building where I knew the elephant would be with her minder.

I walked in tentatively and asked if it was OK to give Valli the skins. He said yes but to put them on the stone floor and then stand back. She was quickly upon them and had snaffled the lot before I had stepped more than one pace back. I stood still and watched in awe as she eyed me, chewing the ten banana peels.

I took a step back, The elephant instantly took a step back. I took another step back and found myself colliding with the roof support beam, so took a step sideways. She took a step back, and then sideways… this was suddenly very interesting.

I slowly took two sliding steps sideways to the left.

She mirrored this action perfectly.

I took two steps back to the right and did a “hokey cokey” foot in the air.

She mirrored this perfectly again.

My next move to the left was slightly forward and sideways, a little faster, and again the kick in the air. There was no doubt at all, as she did the same again, I was laughing and dancing with an elephant. On the very next move sideways however, she took a step further forward than before and reached swiftly out with her trunk to grab my arm.

Before I had any time to react, she had pulled me towards her and downwards, with irresistible strength, and placed her mouth over my head in a manner whereby I could still see but both my ears were covered by her, very soft, mouth. I have since seen photographs of an Indian trainer being lifted in such a position with his legs crossed, but my instinct then was one of slight panic.

The monk in charge was also clearly in a worried state, though I could barely hear him shout, and I believe he hit Valli with his stick and told her “NO!”. At this point she instantly let go and I made an undignified stumbling recovery to a standing position. Brother keeper told me to get down the hill for breakfast and suggested it might be best not to mention this episode, for his sake, so I agreed not to tell anyone.

Until now

This is that elephant, Valli, taken at around that time as she grazed the meadows in “The field of the five saints”

People with rational minds, you may say, will not be interested in falling for such blatant sucker bait in the first place.
But there are many types and variations of conspiracy theory that people who I know and love, fall for – at least to some extent – people I know to be rational and prone to evidence based thinking in all areas,
…BAR this one of theirs.
The type of conspiracy theory that is most commonly held of course, is the type enshrined in our traditions as “religions”.
It relies so consistently on confirmation bias, suspension of rational thinking, appeal to tradition, and our deeply held fear of death of the consciousness, that it is found in every society the world over, and has been for as long as records allow us to see.
This very weight of tradition is sometimes referred to by religionists as “evidence” that there is definitely something to it –
This is the very thing that prevents people from so readily dismissing most religions as conspiracy theories; they fear death themselves, but they even more fear that their lone voice will be ridiculed among the mass of those who hold onto such primitive beliefs.
There’s a rub – the modern religions such as Mormons, Scientologists and Heaven’s Gate type groups are far more readily mocked and ridiculed in the same manner that occurs with conspiracy theorists. It doesn’t take too long though, before the claim to be a legitimate religion means that laws protect these groups from such basic human responsibilities as: taxes, and eventually, if the “religion should be adopted and protected by the state” tribe get their way, you will find that the Blasphemy laws that make Iran and similar Islamic states such a dangerous sink weight on human progress, will be accepted into some less alert societies.

Why do I draw these two groups of “believers” together?
Why isn’t belief in winged horses, angels, the devil, walking on water, raising the dead, and eternal Heaven & Hell kept apart from secret lizard elite rulers, Area 51, Elvis’s island of living dead rock stars, JFK’s chemtrails, and “the Government faked it!”

One reason: The psychological impulse is what I am intrigued about.
I have been a sucker for the desire for there to be some comprehensible reason for human mortality, and some kind of saviour from our losses. I have pursued slender leads based on people drawing pleasant visions, but these have never stuck for me. I can see why people want these things, plus a round comfy container for all our fears and woes. Religion targets these needs most specifically.
The typical religious fundamentalist goes a step further than the average English bishop, by seeking the idea of safety in the certainty that the Bible is the absolute truth and word of God.
He may have a knowledge deep inside, like the lie of a story you told as a child that has been repeated so often by your family, that you have now built your character around it and just accept that it is true after all.
It is incredibly threatening to the persona of such a believer to confront their construct with the solid evidence of it being built entirely on sand, or even worse, thin air – so the ardent believer will swiftly create a world in which his ideas are supported and your evidence is denied.

This is exactly like the conspiracy theorist.
Not only did they always harbour suspicions about those man made clouds that jet airliners create, they now have video after video, with testimony after testimony, often verified by eyewitness accounts from many hundreds of disciples.
You could say to them, “I’m sorry, but I have here every airline pilot in the world, and they are all laughing at you because what you are saying is this “chemical spray” is well proven condensation from jet engines flying at certain altitudes in certain conditions that I could explain scientifically… but inside you know your theory is stupid so why bother?”…
This, would, not, work.
The desire to believe has already taken them way past rational argument or evidence – they can see only their own evidence – just as the Christians tend to cite the Bible as ultimate proof that what the Bible says is true…
The Glenn Becks of this world, so sure that Obama is a wizard who can magically pull off fifteen of the most outrageously difficult conspiracies inside a period of 4 years, cannot be gainsaid, even by this simple and obvious flaw, “it’s impossible” in their ideas.

The desire for these outrageous things to be true both relieves them from the pain of contemplating the banality of their lives, and also from having to deal with the incredible level of uncertainty in a world run by failing human beings who could barely conspire to keep the cat in the back yard.

For some reason, people all over the world really want there to be fairies at the bottom of the garden, aliens living secret lives in Nevada, and a Heaven full of their selected relatives… and they will sometimes kill to preserve their particular conspiracy theory.

Bearing in mind the current furore and role of a Mr Duncan-Smith I think it needs to be seen by as wide an audience as possible. Please enjoy,
it just gets better and better.

A lovely ‘you-couldn’t make-it-up’ incident presented itself to me tonight. Earlier on this evening I took part in Channel 4′s ‘Street Riots: The Live Debate’ over in a studio in Endell Street, Covent Garden. It’s nice being picked up by a chauffeur driven car; deposited into the heart of the West End; and, by-passing queues to be admitted into the green room for free nosh and drinks.

But, I deviate.

Anyway, back on track. Eventually we’re herded into the studio and the warm-up guy does his warm-up stuff, and we gingerly laugh at his not-so-funny patter. Krishan Guru-Murthy, a lot smaller in real life (wears Cuban heels), then gives the SP of the show and introduces us to Iain Duncan-Smith, Hilary Benn, MP, Adrian Mills an Ealing restaurateur (his restaurant was ransacked and looted), Paul Gladstone Reid a composer, pianist, singer-songwriter and producer, and a rather taciturn policeman who referred to all explanations and views contrary to his as ‘excuses’.

The debate went fairly well. Duncan-Smith and the businessman holding the old law-and-order line; people-have-to-take-personal-responsibility-for-their-own-actions was intimated several times by Duncan-Smith in relation to cutting benefits and evicting, even, parents of children convicted of looting.

The Tory line when confronted with problems is always to fall back on the old chestnut of family values and personal responsibility. And Duncan-Smith ensured that nobody, whether they agreed with him or not, left the studio without his message messing around with more pleasant thoughts, such as those ice cold bottles of Peroni waiting for me when I get home.

The show ended and the floor manager wanted us, wheelchair users, to wait until the studio was cleared. No way Pedro! I’d sat for an-hour-and-a-half in a lot of pain, and I needed to pee, quite quickly. So, I got out first, or so I thought, and headed for the lift to take me to the ground floor and the adapted toilet.

Up we went. Out of the lift, throw a right. Bob’s your uncle, there’s the ‘special’ loo waiting to accept yours truly. No. I can’t use the thing says a young geezer all skinny jeans, Loake’s brogues and Ralph Lauren cardy. “Sorry sir, there’s someone in there. He won’t be a minute” instructs this trendy clothes horse, probably a TV researcher. “Ok mate” I say; relief, hopefully, a minute or two away.

Three minutes later the door to the disabled toilet, the one with the big sign announcing in pictogram the universal symbol of disability, and out strolls Iain Duncan-Smith!

Oh glory! Hallelujah! My peeing need seemed to vanish from my mind as I mentally uncrossed my legs and said to Duncan-Smith: “This is an adapted toilet, see the sign?” Which he acknowledged uncomfortably. “Why are you abusing this facility? I’ve had to wait in extreme pain and discomfort because you think you’re above the rules that everyone else accepts!”

Duncan-Smith, is somewhat trapped, because I’ve placed my wheelchair between him and the door, and my PA is standing by my legs, so the trapped rat can’t vault over me and do a runner.

Then as I have him on the ropes waiting to deliver my coup de grace down drop his gloves his guard is gone as he splutters out “I’m sorry, but somebody told me I could use it”.

Gotcha! “So, if someone told you to pick up that TV because it was going begging. You’d pick up the TV?” I asked. “What’s happened to your sense of personal responsibility for your own action?” I pressed. “Are you exempt from the rules and regulations you spent the past hour telling us we must adhere to because that’s how we maintain an orderly society?” I finished pushing my way into the loo.

Duncan-Smith, thinking he could do a runner took full advantage of my cessation of the harangue and just as he thought he’d escaped the loony wheely, I looked into the bowl and spotted he hadn’t flushed the loo.

“Oy!” I called, arresting ADS’s flight: “Do you know it’s customary to flush the khazy after use?”

I can still picture his look, a mixture of abject contempt and ‘beam-me-up-Scotty’, as he drew an embarrassed grin across his Chevy while abruptly turning a corner to the safety of the street.

NO mention of him stopping to wash his hands. I guess they are bleached white from the amount of washing hands he has been happily engaged in since then…

If there is ever a lack of progress towards the disestablishment of the CofE it should be countered with some hard facts -
for example:-
The Church used a survey it had commissioned to suggest that “4 out of 5 people believe in the power of prayer”.
This is clearly part of its attempt to bolster its position against the nasty aggressive secularisation that I and so many others are pursuing. The assertion is an attempt to imply that a majority of people have a faith in God, (never mind all the serious research that shows that prayer can have no effect upon others at all.)
There’s a BIG problem with this research.
The question they asked in their survey was, ‘Irrespective of whether you currently pray or not, if you were to pray for something at the moment, what would it be for?’
Which had 81% of people taking the survey giving a response of some sort.
This can no more legitimately be made to imply 4/5 believe in the power of prayer than if one asked “If you could ask a Genie for just one thing what would it be?” and insisted that the childlike responses show the percentage of people who believed in Genies.

It has come to a pretty pass when the desperation of the fading and primitive church, exposed as a fraud in so many ways, resorts to twisting Tabloid style surveys to try and ward off its inevitable decline.
Did they really believe this would not be exposed?
Is this feeble duplicity what a degree in Theology teaches these days?

Justin Welby says that people must be “barking mad” if they think he can solve the problems of the CofE – he’s right, this is supported by some research!
I give you my, made up on the spot, theologically appropriate survey:-
When 2000 people representing an enormous state sanctioned puddle of piss were asked how they would like to help dry out their huge piss soaked tent, 93% felt that standing on the inside, pissing, was a useful drying method.
I have no desire to outlaw stupidity, and maybe I am an “aggressive secularist”, but so should all sane people be…since secularism is the separation of church and state. The state is something I am involved in come what may. The church is something I should be free from, and everyone should be free to choose to be free from. If you choose to worship Eastenders, fine, its your TV, you can do that, aggressively if you so choose. If you want to demonstrate more spectacular stupidity, fine, you can believe in a God that pre-ordains stupid symbolism to help create and sustain insane creeds and beliefs.
But keep your representatives of your stupidity out of my state legislature,
thank you so much.

On Tuesday I received a card.
I didn’t open it since I knew it was from her, knew it was an early card.
Today I received what is definitely another, similar card.
My mum has a progressive, organic brain disease called multi-infarct dementia, one of a set of diseases that are the curse of our successful, life extending age.
She is 87, and when her loving husband of 64 years died in 2009, her mind was sharp. Now, she is fine as long as she is at home in her Dorset Village, with neighbours, friends and my sister calling in regularly to check she’s OK and keep her company, but she sometimes thinks I am her brother…
“Who is taking me home?” is a question she may repeat if out with any of us…

This Red Nose day I shall be doing 57 silly things to raise money for every year I have been alive. The money I raise will actually go towards dementia support and research.
The woman who raised me and who I believe I know and love, is changing, and not in a good way.
But the love she has built, or more like cemented into her soul, over eight decades of struggle, survival and growth, means that she is still the loving woman my father first fell for, back in 1942.
Happy eternally repeating birthday from me, back to you, Sylvia.

On the other hand we have Jeremy Hunt, every rightist commentator I can find, and a number of ill-informed passionate souls saying that the NHS must be forced to compete harder, like a cyclist doing extra training, in order to win some plasticised gold medal.

To claim it is “my NHS” and defend it is not my goal.
(It is our NHS, and we should understand it).
Claiming that both sides in this debate appear to be as lost in the idiocies of performance management, arguing about techniques for changing targets in a “caring for people industry” they do not understand, is more like it.

A question:-
How many of you have an elderly relative who has been through/in the hospital system in the last 10 years?
Where I work, every colleague appears to have this experience, and every one of them has a sad story of blatant failure in the system that they had to work to overcome.

I use the word system advisedly. The hospitals are, each, one group of systems within a system, within a much larger system that includes GPs, Community Nurses, Social workers, Occupational therapists… therapists of all myriad hues, and all the back up staff that go with them.
At the “head” of all these myriad providers of health and social care services sit “the commissioners”, and those many local and area commissioners are currently going through enormous changes brought about by the almighty commissioner that sits “above” them – the UK government.

At the heart of all this lies you, the patient/citizen,
or it should do.
In fact, despite the oft repeated and rephrased mantras about patient-centred care, or customer focus, the poor bloody citizen is regarded by the whole system as a passive widget in the almighty machine.
Another question:- Ever heard the phrase, “non compliant patient”?

It is not that citizens always know best and should be running the NHS, though of course they generally do know best what they want and need for themselves. It is more of an issue that front line professionals should be supported to do their job in helping citizens to achieve their better life, without hideous and multiple half-hearted tweaks and experimental built-on projects in a bureaucratic system. This is a system that thinks the committee that designed the camel should have included more measuring systems and been much more closely inspected before it was allowed to run in the 2.30 at Aintree.

So our professionals, our nurses and doctors, therapists and admin staff, managers and politicians, are all fiddling with the camel, those who specialise in hump enhancement believing that bolting on a third hump will make it run longer, while those who just do camel toes……. believe that carefully trimming its toes will help it jump the high fences.

A thorough analysis of what it is that NHS front line staff do will show you just how much they have been pushed to meet targets, pass inspections, fill in forms, cover backs, seek the money, hand off the problem, comply with policy directives, stick to tight specialist professional guidelines, obey the rules, absorb the new rules daily, go through mapped processes, review all of the above and not jump out of a high window screaming…
Did you see the words, “listen to, and care for, people” in there?, no, of course not.

None of this is the “fault” of any individual person.
No one is trying to kill the NHS.
But in trying to manage its performance and modify design for exception elimination, to manage down costs, set targets, beat deadlines, grab monetary incentives, and more, the treatment may be succeeding in killing the patient.

Ask any sister in charge of any hospital ward, how many of those patients actually have a clinical need to be in that ward at any one time, and you will possibly hear the truth, that it is never more than 50%.
Ask that same sister how many forms she has to fill in for each patient. (it can be 10 different paper care plans for just one person, never mind other paper work.)
An amazingly large number of people are admitted when they do not need to be.
This is often seen as a precautionary approach, which sounds reasonable. But when it is an elderly person who has a troubling pain in the gut, who has been waiting 3 hours 58 minutes in the ER waiting area – alongside fifty or more others who also mysteriously wait 3 hours and 58 minutes, something begins to smell a bit fishy…
and that is just one front door to the system.

When you want to see the GP, what do you expect?
If you are an average working adult with what you believe might be more than a minor problem, my guess would be that you will expect to be able to make an appointment, see a GP you probably don’t know, and have 6 minutes to tell him your one problem. After that you will expect to either receive a course of antibiotics, or (deep fear) be referred to a specialist for tests.
The time rationing system seems acceptable to you (They are busy people in demand).
The limited times of available appointment slots may be annoying, but is similarly acceptable.
Since it is a free service you may decide to just skip that appointment if you are feeling better now five days have passed from when you booked it…
The system doesn’t like this.
There are signs up about it, for you to obey, and systems in place to try and prevent this “bad patient behaviour”.
You may be a non-compliant patient.

If you find your way to a social service help-desk, feeling unable to cope with caring for your sick mother, curious as to whether she might be able to get some help from the council, what will you expect from this front door?
(It is all part of the one huge system)
There are some criteria that you may need to meet straight away…
Has your mother got savings of over £23K? what are the details of all her various forms of income? How severe is her need? Is it life threatening? or only might be in a few weeks if nothing is done (in which case, better wait a few weeks)
Again,
the system is set up to restrict access,
to prevent those below a certain threshold of need from accessing a rationing system of service provision that is probably not suited to the needs of that person anyway.

Inside the health and social care system we like to think that we are the wondrous professionals who provide the health of the nation, we see ourselves as more than an emergency service, the backbone of British social society. We secretly feel we may be part of a system that has increased our population’s average life expectancy so brilliantly over the past sixty years.
We buy into the fear that we cannot afford to help all people who need it, that we must ration and constrict services so as to keep down costs. We also see professional service provision as our proper goal, and specialisation a great way of ensuring people get the best possible service…
It’s a great, big, failed lie.
Managing down costs and increasing standardisation, inspections and targets, is exactly why Ford lost out to Toyota way back in the 80s. It perversely achieves the opposite of its avowed aim.

Dear NHS system controllers: – If you redesign the system around tailoring your responses to each person as they first come to you, the “magic” actually does happen. They get the life they really wanted, when we listen and understand what they really want.
You get to do a great job, when you escape the safe office and sit alongside the professionals at the front door, also doing a great job, seeing first hand how simple listening ears and helping hands can prevent multiple professional referrals and total dissatisfaction in “your patient”.

The beauty of doing this is that people achieve a massive boost in quality of life while saving the care system millions of pounds. Because 90% of the demand from patients is repeat or “failure” demand, i.e. when you get it right first time, this demand disappears.

Due to confidentiality issues, I cannot cite the real life examples of where this has been proved, but it has.
The trick will be for the frustrated managers and directors at ALL levels to stop trying to tweak the wrong things righter, take a step back, and see exactly where all the failures in the system are occurring (everywhere) – and why they are occurring (three-humped, toe-trimmed, massively inspected camels) and then commit to joining the extant revolution that says,
“The citizen shall define what will make their own life better,
we will stop doing everything that does not support this happening”.
(this has massive implications, the elimination of a million forms, the throwing away of 98% of all rule books)

It turns out that family and community support provide 97% of any individual’s care and support throughout their lifetime. The first job of the statutory sector is to support, and not to belittle and take over, the roles of those care givers.
When we get this right, the specialists can be called in only when they are really the best answer to the citizen’s problems.
When we get this right we will see that everyone has strengths, links, assets and desires – and is not a bag of needs that we should hastily fill with statutory “care”.
When we get this right the NHS may well be so efficient, we actually can smile and assure critics from home and abroad that we have the best system in the world.

There are those who think that being celibate means having no sexuality…
there are those who think that celibacy is a thin mask for rampant secret orgies..
and there are those who get pleasure from sucking the toes of Vietnamese ladyboys,
but the Pope’s sexuality has mostly been expressed in the form of telling people what not to do.

To do this one must have a good knowledge of sexual urges and these, funnily enough, seem to be pretty much universal in men. When I was at school I discovered that every other boy had also discovered the pleasures of masturbation, and then at later schools, the same thing. This evidence leads me to the belief that Pope can talk about at least this one form of sex from extensive personal experience, and yet he seems to feel the need to deny even that small pleasure to people on the grounds of silly lines in the ancient magic book.

I am quite ready to believe that Ratzinger has never done the mystery dance with a lady, not quite so sure he hasn’t tried a few adventurous manly cuddles after his spell in the Hitler youth, but wet dreams and “unintentional self-touching” ?
…these must, on the balance of probabilities, be well known to him.
And, as I have stated in a previous post – Wanking is good.
Wanking beautifully and satisfyingly gets rid of that natural urge that is used by backward cultures to justify the oppression of women, and we all know how much the pope champions the liberation of women…
So it is with no sarcasm that I am proud to announce the legacy of the retiring pope:
The world’s most famous wanker.