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Posted on 22 February 2019 20:25
When I lived in Glasgow, many years ago, my two elder sons
aged 5 and 7 learned a song at school:
Jesus bids us shine with a pure, clear light, Like a little candle burning in the night, In this world of darkness, Jesus bids us shine, You in your small corner and me in mine.
Maybe you’ll think I’m stupid, but it always moved me. Why? Because
it’s about the purity of a child, about kindness and above all the right of a
child to believe. Believe in what? I hear you say. It doesn’t matter whether you substitute Mohammed, Buddha or
Jupiter Optimus Maximus for Jesus, it’s what we should bring our children up to
believe in – about a culture of kindness. |
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Posted on 01 February 2019 09:28
There is much talk on MSN about
stress interviews in industry. Young people with appropriate skills and CV’s
are bullied and demeaned to see how resilient they are under stressful
conditions. Personal remarks about their appearance, posture, tastes and
previous performance are made to make the candidate as uncomfortable as
possible, hoping to elicit a reaction. The ‘successful’ candidate would be
unruffled throughout. As a Royal College representative
on interview committees for about 20 years and having a lot of practical experience
as an examiner, I think I may be allowed a comment. |
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Posted on 30 January 2019 10:14
Deeply saddened by the death of a young man in Yarm on
Sunday early morning. My sincere sympathies go out to his grieving family and
friends. Attacked and chased by a gang of 6 or more louts, his body was found
in the river 2 days later. Despicable. I live in an area where Cleveland Police have zero
tolerance for exceeding the speed limit (you can get 3 points on your license
for doing 33 mph), but they seem to have enormous tolerance for violence and
drugs. About time they cleaned up Yarm which used to be a lovely, North
Yorkshire town where one could go out in the evening without a likelihood of
assault, or seeing druggies and fights on the High Street. |
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Posted on 20 January 2019 04:57
I think sometimes that our problem in Britain is that
the voting population is not so bright. Any nation who could vote in three successive
Socialist governments in the face of a predictable economic decline cannot be
MENSA material. We now seem to lurch from political crisis to political crisis
and although we have plenty of politicians (who look forward 5 or less years)
we have no statesmen who look ahead generations. There is an Aesop fable which seems
to me to demonstrate where we are with our democratically voted Brexit. |
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Posted on 30 December 2018 10:22
I once recall a conversation (a little heated) with one of
my nieces when I said I understood how bad a labour pain was. She had started
by saying that female obstetricians must be better than male obstetricians. My
claim to understand labour pains provoked a rather more volatile response than
I think it merited along the lines of, ‘You’re a man. You can’t understand.’
I felt at the time that although I don’t have a uterus, I
have delivered 22 babies and witnessed many more deliveries when I trained and
since then seen pain in many forms. |
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Posted on 20 December 2018 08:29
My sons asked me for this recipe so I thought I'd put it here for ease of reference and to share with anyone who wishes to try something new.
Swedish Christmas Ham
The main problem when you buy a
smoked or ‘green’ ham is that when you roast it, commonly, it is very salty.
This ‘recipe’ if that’s what you’d call it, allows you to get the salt out of
the ham and roast it in what in my family, has always been the traditional
manner.
Start by removing the rind or
skin so you have a layer of fat remaining. |
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Posted on 17 December 2018 08:08
I was born in 1950. It was a time when Spencer Tracy, Kirk Douglas, Bert
Lancaster were on the rise in their careers. Human icons most young fellas
looked up to. Cinema was the great cultural phenomenon at that time and the
actors became huge.
At that time too, Marvel’s comic book superheroes were very popular in
the pictorial cartoon books and magazines. Like any media one read them and
loved them through the suspension of belief. It was escapism at its best – a kind
of momentary flight, giving a short-term emotional gratification. |
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Posted on 21 May 2018 07:58
Note de l'auteur
Je dois expliquer pourquoi je l'ai utilisé des morceaux de texte du livre
d'Albert Camus l’étranger tout au long comme têtes de chapitre.
Il a écrit de son livre "Il y a longtemps je résume l'étranger dans une
phrase que je réalise est extrêmement paradoxale. «Dans notre société, tout
homme qui ne pleure pas à l'enterrement de sa mère est susceptible d'être
condamné à mort».
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Posted on 25 April 2018 13:46
The plight of the Windrush families and their British naturalisation is a topic quite close to my heart.
My father was born in India, you see. When WW2 broke out, he came to Britain, joined the RNR and as a ship’s doctor had quite a bad war in the Pacific, North Atlantic and Mediterranean. He held a British passport and settled as a GP in Bermondsey once the war ended in 1947. He obtained British naturalisation without difficulty, because he was a British subject and that did not change until the immigration act of 1948. |
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Posted on 09 February 2018 16:30
Many will have heard of this
terrible, tragic case. The doctor involved was tried for manslaughter and
convicted despite serious Trust flaws which led to the tragedy. My feeling here is rather different
to the majority. I do agree that a junior doctor, left unsupervised with two
juniors below her, each of whom had only a months’ experience of paediatrics,
and had herself just returned from 13 months maternity leave was particularly
vulnerable to a mistake being made. Where I depart from many people’s stated
views is that I do not think the registrar is culpable. |
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