GOGS...Grumpy Old Gits Society..

Not wishing to crash Don's thread about the thingy sale......

.....I have often wondered what Ronnie would do with all my bits - on the assumption, which seems reasonable, that I will go first. Of the two of us, it's me that has all the clutter. Too many Hi-fis, guitars, books, TOYS!

She is reasonably organised and doesn't collect that way so many of us do.

So I'm more than a bit grumpy that 1) I have to sod off at all and 2) the poor woman is going to have to cope with clearing out my junk as well as all the other stuff that goes with, what I hope is, a dear one's departure. She will have enough trouble with the authorities here as I have stipulated no funeral, no stupid waste of dosh on flash coffins that I could make for a hundredth of the price and if possible, no tears and bury me in the back garden under an oak sapling! Might not get away with the last one sadly.

Very sad for the guy selling the thingies too. Looking at some of those, I start to see how attractive some of them are although I have enough trouble with what I have already.

Hey ho. Back to painting banisters!

"Oh, don't the days seem lank and long

when all goes right and nothing goes wrong

And isn't your life extremely flat

when you've nothing whatever to grumble at"

My solution for clutter:

1. Divorce

2.Sell house

3.Move to 2 bedroom apartment

4.Photo table with lighting + eBay account

EM

Am I pissed off this morning.

I keep reading about the NHS being the greatest health service in the world and laugh myself silly.

For the last two years Ronnie's brother has been complaining about pain in his back and stomach and guess what.....Dr feeds him pills and swells big pharma's coffers a bit more.

We have just heard that he collapsed yesterday and was rushed to hospital. A tumour the size of a fist in his stomach has exploded. There are signs on his colon and prostate that it has spread. TWO YEARS! One proper test would have surely showed a problem but no, just feed him pain killers and he'll go away. Well, it's true, he will, the hospital didn't expect him to survive the night but he is still hanging on this morning.

Here in France, I had a small transitory stroke and I was in hospital for three days have every test known to man. They seem to think their job is to diagnose, treat and or prevent problems. Strange mindset!

I know funerals are a fact of life as we all age but Pete is only 18 months older than Ronnie and should have had another 10 to 15 years at least.

Makes my blood boil to see such waste of humungous funds and people's lives.

For many years part of my business and scientific responsibility was assessing opportunities, acquisitions and market directions in health care on a world wide basis. My travels were extensive, not exhaustive, covering Europe, UK, North America and the Pacific rim. In the process, I developed opinions about the nature of health care in the countries I visited. There are significant differences from country to country. Based on these observations, my choice of "where to be" were I to fall ill, ended up with (despite many criticisms and some bogus statistics) USA #1, Australia #2 and France #3. Note that this is for generalized "illness" and would change for specific cases e.g infectious disease #1-France.

While much is made of the differences in social policy and economic factors related to health care, there are also real differences in tradition, training and prevalent spectra of disease among the various counties.

EM

What is it with the UK motorway network and Bank Holidays?? This morning I set-out in plenty of time to get to Oulton Park for the first race of the day. My planned route??...........

A1(M)

M1

M62/M60, etc

M6

M56

A49

The route planner says 3hr05, but on a journey of that type and distance I usually reckon to take 10mins off the planner's hour. Anyway, I set-off roughly 3hrs before the scheduled time of the first race. Should have been plenty of time.

I got to Hartshead Moor Services in 1hr40 - roughly what I would have expected - and I'm 60mls to go and nearly 1hr30 to do it in. Then I hit a huuuuuge hold-up and eventually get directed off the motorway at J24, after doing less than 10 miles in nearly an hour, into Huddersfield which is gridlocked. I managed to navigate my way (not a diversion direction to be seen) on rural roads to M62J22. Back on the motorway, several further lots of roadworks (50mph limit with average speed cameras, but in reality stop/go/stop/go mulitple times) and I eventually get to Birch Services just before midday. 24mls distance (of my planned journey) took over 2hrs. At this point, I'm saying to myself "roughly 40mls to go, I might as well continue as I'm this close". How wrong was I? Yet more hold-ups on the M60/M62 and M6. I didn't get on to the M56 - still almost 20 miles from Oulton Park - until just before 13hr00, by which time the traffic was building-up in the opposite direction (the way home), so I decided to abort.

At 18hr30 I finally arrived home, 11hrs after I left. I covered 340mls and in that time had no more than an hour in total out of the driver's seat. 10hrs driving, 340mls - of which less than 10mls was on A-roads - and no motorsport seen. Am I entitled to be grumpy??

Having received health services in the US, Finland, France and Germany I can see why EM says the US is best... IF you can afford it and that is the problem. The culture doesn't save or rather it saves for the wrong things. My cousin and her husband have never had insurance (well not until recently) and when she got pregnant the hospital set up a system like a "Christmas club" for them where they kept paying money in right up until the birth. I think they had to bring in about 10k USD$ to start and when one birth went badly (kid was OK in the end) it went up another 5K USD$ (total 15k USD$).

She received no pre-birth consultation apart from some info from her gynecologist and no post birth consultancy apart from a few vaccinations at the doctor.

They both work 2 jobs. She has a learning disability so high-paying jobs are difficult to get. The work as hard as they can and they are not too smart with their money: They have (large) dogs, drive gas guzzling pick-ups, leave the TV on in every room ALL day and night (because the dogs like it). They eat "out" a lot (OK is McDonald's eating "out"?) but they don't through a ton of money out the window.

If they had had insurance things would have been a lot better and some of the health issues their kids have would have been diagnosed earlier. She doesn't understand things they way most people do so she needs to be talked to in a special way.

My point is, apart from them not being too bright with money, which likely amounts to about 500 USD$ a month getting wasted they are not doing too many things wrong and can't (or rather couldn't) afford health care.

I highly doubt there is a plan out there that will cover a 4-person family for 500 USD$ a month.

When I had surgery done in the US it was great. When I had problem sin Finland, I got exactly what I needed. In France I swear the medicine is more advanced than anywhere else... I mean the stuff worked IMMEDIATELY... and well.. in Germany I have never ever paid an additional cent of anything and care has been top notch from child birth, meningitis to cancer prevention treatment...