Willy Windsor: A grand (and a bit) Days Work: Private Finance Idiot: Tesco Bird Bandits: Scum Villages: Treegonometry: and an Eight year old snack.

More than a lot of lack of warm, minimal amounts of atmospheric movement, minus amounts of skywater and missing solar stuff at the Castle this morn.

 

 

Allegedly Pippa’s sister has been banged up by some tall bald bloke and is in ‘Orspital with a touch of morning sickness, that’ll teach em.

 

All across up the duff Blighty

Doctors are earning £1,200 for a single day’s work due to high demand for out-of-hours GPs.

Some are even being paid bonuses for going out and visiting patients rather than dealing with them over the phone according to the Daily Turdygraph

Younger GPs are shunning the traditional route of working their way up in a practice, they say, in favour of locuming which enables them to earn up to £20,000 a month.

Carmen Marshall, who runs The Locum GP Consultancy in Luton Beds said hourly rates, had risen in the past five years because of a paucity of GPs.

She said the £1,200 figures tended to be for 12-hour shifts on bank holidays.

A spokesman for the British Medical Association said locums were in general paid less than partner GPs. He added: “Locums have always been part of the workforce.”

 

No wonder the NHS is going tits up...

 

Son of a ........Baronet

And alien reptile in disguise George (I have an IQ lower than a turd) Osborne is to announce a new generation of PFI schemes, but allegedly he will introduce safeguards to ensure the taxpayer shares in any profits.

Companies involved in the private finance projects will also be forced to disclose their profits following fears that unjustified “windfalls” have been made at the expense of taxpayers because of poorly designed schemes.

In his Autumn Statement tomorrow, the Chancellor will announce a programme called PF2, to replace the original scheme. It will be used to finance a new generation of hospitals, schools, roads and other taxpayer-funded projects.

“Mr” Osborne will also disclose that he will save £2.5 billion by helping Whitehall departments and local authorities to renegotiate their current PFI deals.

The Government is committed to paying £229 billion in the coming decades for PFI schemes that were agreed by previous administrations to build public services. The schemes have been undermined by allegations that taxpayers are forced to pay hundreds of pounds for basic maintenance such as changing a light bulb.

More than 20 NHS trusts are facing serious financial instability and resultant problems with paying for medical services because of the costs of the schemes.

The first PF2 project is expected to be a £1.7 billion scheme to rebuild and renovate 219 schools. Work is expected to begin in the spring.

The “Chancellor” will also outline plans for an expansion in gas-generated power stations, with 30 plants to be providing electricity by 2030.

This marks a victory over the Liberal Democrats, who wished to move towards greener energy.

 

Oh good, can’t wait, mainly because I will be dead by 2030......

 

Norf of the border

A 24-hour Tesco store has resorted to closing late at night in order to evict a couple of persistent visitors.

Two birds – a robin and a 
pigeon – have been making themselves at home at the Tesco Extra store in Inshes, Inverness, defying repeated attempts by managers to bar them. The pair has taken to circling the checkouts and loitering in the cafe window, searching for scraps of food dropped by 
customers.

Managers have now been reduced to cutting the store’s opening hours in an attempt to deal with the birds as effectively as possible, while keeping the inconvenience to customers at a minimum.

An assistant at the supermarket said: “We’ve had to start closing the store for a while at 11pm, when it’s quiet. All the staff has to go to the staff room and wait while the birds are chased out of the store.”

 

Morrisons has better fruit and veg.....

 

Right a bit to the land of the “Dam”

Amsterdam is to create "Scum villages" where nuisance neighbours and anti-social tenants will be exiled from the city and re-housed in caravans or containers with "minimal services" under constant police supervision.

Social housing problem families or tenants who do not show an improvement or refuse to go to the special units face eviction and homelessness.

Eberhard van der Laan, Amsterdam's Labour mayor, has tabled the £810,000 plan to tackle 13,000 complaints of anti-social behaviour every year. He complained that long-term harassment often leads to law abiding tenants, rather than their nuisance neighbours, being driven out.

"This is the world turned upside down," the mayor said at the weekend.

The project also involves setting up a special hotline and system for victims to report their problems to the authorities.

The new punishment housing camps have been dubbed "scum villages" because the plan echoes a proposal from Geert Wilders, the leader of a populist Dutch Right-wing party, for special units to deal with persistent troublemakers.

"Repeat offenders should be forcibly removed from their neighbourhood and sent to a village for scum," he suggested last year. "Put all the trash together."

There are already several small-scale trial projects in the Netherlands, including in Amsterdam, where 10 shipping container homes have been set aside for persistent offenders, living under 24-hour supervision from social workers and police.

Under the new policy, from January next year, victims will no longer have to move to escape their tormentors, who will be moved to the new units.

A team of district "harassment directors" have already been appointed to spot signals of problems and to gather reports of nuisance tenants.

The Dutch Parool newspaper observed that the policy was not a new one. In the 19th century, troublemakers were moved to special villages in Drenthe and Overijssel outside Amsterdam. The villages were rarely successful, becoming sink estates for the lawless.

"We have learned from the past," said the mayor's spokesman. "A neighbourhood can deal with one problem family but if there are more the situation escalates."

 

Take note Piss Poor Policies Millionaires Club Coalition---"We have learned from the past,"

  

Back in almost Crimbo Blighty

 

The formula for decorating the perfect Christmas tree has been cracked.

Getting the correct ratio of lights and tinsel is also crucial to lighting up your life, say students at Sheffield University's maths society.

Their calculations suggest the tree-topping angel or star should be precisely one tenth the size of the tree. The number of lights required is found by multiplying the mathematical constant Pi (3.14) by the height of the tree in centimetres.

For example, a 183cm (6ft) tree needs 574cm of lights (183 x 3.14) or 18ft 9in. But perfection is only obtainable with 37 baubles and 920cm (30ft) of tinsel.

'The formulas took us about two hours to complete,' said formula creators Nicole Wrightham and Alex Craig, both 20. 'We hope they'll play a part in making Christmas a bit easier for everyone.'

The work was commissioned by department store Debenhams.

Christmas decorations buyer Sarah Theobold said: 'The formula is so versatile it will work for a tree large enough for the Royal Family at Balmoral but also on trees small enough for modest homes.'

 

Nah: the picture is what the perfect Crimbo tree looks like-still in the ground....

 

And finally:

 

Left to the place where mammals are kept in captivity

An eight-year-old girl has had a lucky escape after a dolphin she was feeding bit her at a US theme park.

Jillian Thomas was holding out fish to feed to dolphins at Orlando's SeaWorld when she got an unexpected surprise.

While she was feeding the usually friendly mammals, a dolphin lunged at her and nipped her hand.

The girl, whose parents posted the video on YouTube to make other people aware of the dangers, suffered three small puncture wounds.

Jillian's father, Jamie Thomas, told local media the family were angry at the theme park for not warning them of the dangers of dolphin feeding.

"We felt powerless," he said.

"We thought, look, we've got this video, let's make it public, and let's try to put some pressure on SeaWorld to make some changes."

 

How about realising that feeding a large mammal with teeth by hand could be a bit chancy you twonk....but did it do it on Porpoise.....

 

That’s it: I’m orf to bung my flash memory in the oven

 

And today’s thought:

One dahn one to go.

 

 

Angus

NHS news: Tesco Extra: Royal Las Vegas: Chicken charmer: Got orf my land: and Rubber Duck Debugging.

Not a lot of light stuff at the Castle this morn, the liquid metal in the gauge has descended to a more reasonable level, the garden is in need of a fettle-again and his Maj has discovered the joy of vanilla ice cream.

Not sure if there will be a post tomorrow-I have an early appointment with the tooth puller, hence the rather endless rambling today.

All across not well Blighty

And apparently over the seas our dear old NHS is still being “Reformed”, it seems that high-profile NHS hospitals in England are to be encouraged by the government to set up profit-making branches abroad to help fund services in the UK.

An agency will aim to link hospitals such as Great Ormond Street with foreign governments that want access to British-run health services.

Investment would have to be drawn from hospitals' private UK work, but with profits ploughed back into the NHS.

Meanwhile, before the Health and Social Care Bill actually passes into ignominy in the leaning tower of Westminster tonight NHS trusts have been pre-empting the “reforms”.

Thousands of staff have already been laid off, meaning the existing management bodies - primary care trusts - have had to merge during the transition.

At a local level, GPs have been forming themselves into groups - known as clinical commissioning groups - for the past 18 months. They will be the bodies that take responsibility for spending 60% of the NHS budget.

There are now 240 of them, although that could change if some of the smaller ones merge as has been happening in the past few months.

1 April (vey apt) 2013 marks the day the new NHS is born. Strategic health authorities and PCTs will be abolished, leaving the GP-led groups and the national board to take on their full functions.

However, the board will retain ultimate responsibility for the budget for those groups which have not been authorised to take full control of the purse strings.

Meanwhile, local authorities will take control of public health - something they used to do up until the mid 1970s.

This will mean directors of public health, currently employed by PCTs, will move across to local government and, on a practical level, schemes designed to encourage healthier lifestyles will be organised by local councils.

A new body, Public Health England, will be created within the Department of Health to take a lead on the issue.

From April, competition in the health service will be extended to include a host of community services such as physiotherapy and podiatry - it is already available to patients who are undergoing non-emergency operations such as knee and hip replacements.

Which brings me to THIS

Eight NHS trusts have been warned about anti-competitive behaviour over the way they ran their private patient units.

The trusts - all based in south-east England - were reported to the Office of Fair Trading by a whistleblower after they exchanged information about pricing.

They escaped a formal investigation by giving voluntary assurances they would no longer discuss pricing.

They have also agreed to train their staff in competition law.

The exchange of commercially sensitive pricing information can result in higher prices for customers as it can diminish incentives to compete on price.

The OFT has the power to impose large financial penalties when such practices are uncovered.

But in this case the regulator decided not to carry out a formal investigation as it judged the exchange of information was down to a lack of awareness.

The eight trusts involved were: Brighton and Sussex, Frimley Park, East Sussex Healthcare, Portsmouth, Dartford and Gravesham, Southampton, Epsom and St Helier, North Hertfordshire and my very favourite butcher’s shop- Frimley Park,

Deborah Jones, of the OFT, said: "We welcome the assurances given by these trusts which have enabled us to bring our preliminary investigation to a close."

Oh well as long as they have promised......

Keeping with the Blighty icon theme

Tesco could be fined up to £200,000 after foreign students at one of its warehouses were found to be working illegally.

Authorities found the students, of almost a dozen nationalities, were working significantly longer hours than their visas allowed at the warehouse operated by Britain’s biggest supermarket chain.

The breaches were discovered after immigration officials swooped on the Tesco.com building in Croydon, south London, last month.

It is understood that at least seven of the students, none of whom has been identified, have been deported. It follows Home Office operations to put a stop to “visa abuse”.

Officials discovered the students, who were predominantly of Bangladeshi and Indian origin, had been working up to three-and-a-half times longer than their visas allowed.

The Daily Telegraph understands that a further 15 students remain under investigation. The Home Office would say only that inquiries were “ongoing”.

Tesco was subsequently issued with a “notification of potential liability”. Authorities are now deciding whether to go further and issue the employer with a notification of liability, and a fine of up to £10,000 per illegal worker. The Home Office said the company needed to provide “evidence that it was carrying out the legally required checks to avoid a fine”.

The retailer said it was “co-operating fully” with the UKBA, adding that it had tightened its procedures. It did not condone employing illegal workers.

 

Yeah right, still every little helps...their profits...

Over the big salty thing that isn’t the pacific

Allegedly a certain ginger haired squaddy has been spotted partying poolside with Hollywood royalty at a Las Vegas casino.

The third-in-line heir to England's throne was at Wet Republic on Saturday, an exclusive club at the MGM Grand which was hosting a party celebrating the start of Jennifer Lopez's tour with Enrique Inglesias, People reported.

The shirtless royal reportedly went largely unnoticed, with J-Lo attracting all the attention.

He sipped Grey Goose and chatted with his entourage, a small group of male friends, and some girls who had joined the group.

The next day he was seen again sipping vodka and beer and throwing inflatable beach balls at passing women.

That night he went to a VIP pool party and jumped into the water in his jeans.

Alright for some....

Somewhere on this wobbly world
 

No guns, no traps, just his wits and a song.

Watch as the man above sings for his supper.


Must try that....sorry about the sound, click on the link over the video and watch the original.

Across the channel and right a whimsy
 

A German farmer poured manure on a group of trance music fans who organized an improvised open air festival on his land, the N-24 TV channel reported.

At first, the elderly farmer from the northern German province of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania tried to persuade about 40 Goa trance fans, who gathered at his field without permission, to end their party.

When they refused, he drove a tank-truck with manure to the place, took a hose and turned the faucet on.

The participants, who had to immediately end their party for apparent reasons, complained to police about damage done to their cars, tents and other property, which they estimated at 5,000 euro ($6,100).

The incident is being probed by local prosecutors, who are to decide whether a case should be launched. 

Slurry with a fringe on top?

And finally:

How to debug your code using a rubber duck

Rubber duck debugging, Rubber Ducking, or the Rubber Duckie Test is an informal term used in software engineering to refer to a method of debugging code. The name is a reference to an apocryphal story in which an unnamed expert programmer would keep a rubber duck by his desk at all times, and debug his code by forcing himself to explain it, line-by-line, to the duck.

To use this process, a programmer meticulously explains code to an inanimate object, such as a rubber duck, in the expectation that upon reaching a piece of incorrect code and trying to explain it, the programmer will notice the error.  In describing what the code is supposed to do and observing what it actually does, any incongruity between these two becomes apparent.

In a nutshell, a software engineer places a generic rubber duckie on your desk. Every time you make a big coding decision or implementation, you explain how it all works to the rubber duckie. If you find yourself straining for an explanation, or if you find yourself unable to even come up with something logical, stop. The duckie has served its purpose -- it's helped you expose a bug or design flaw or implementation flaw that otherwise might have gone unnoticed.

 

Thank him/her upstairs that I got out of computers....

 That’s it: I’m orf to suss out ‘solid smoke’ 

And today’s thought:

Do you really want me to tell you?

Angus