The blog with no name

This website is actually quite special.
Does anyone know why?

I'm not telling yet.

As much as we complain about the NHS, it could be a lot worse:

...most Americans are unaware that the United States is the only country in the developed world that doesn't already have a fundamentally public--that is, tax-supported--health care system.

That means that the United States has been the unwitting control subject in a 30-year, worldwide experiment comparing the merits of private versus public health care funding. For the people living in the United States, the results of this experiment with privately funded health care have been grim. The United States now has the most expensive health care system on earth and, despite remarkable technology, the general health of the U.S. population is lower than in most industrialized countries. Worse, Americans' mortality rates--both general and infant--are shockingly high.

Full article

I know that the Canadian public health care system has problems which are very similar to those experienced by the NHS, but at least is there.

An island so remote that there are only four pictures of it in Flickr.com. More pictures can be found here.

It's a small place but has learnt a long time ago that it needed to control its population to guarantee its survival.

Tikopians practice an intensive permaculture system similar in principle to forest gardening, and the gardens of the New Guinea highlands. Their agricultural practices are strongly and consciously tied to the population density. For example, around 1600, the people agreed to slaughter all pigs on the island, and substitute fishing, because the pigs were taking too much food that could be eaten by people.

Tikopia and Cyclone Zoe

Somebody travelled to Tikopia.

I always wonder about this type of news.

The lives of elderly hospital patients are being put at risk because nurses do not always have the time to feed them, according to a survey by Age Concern. Nine out of 10 nurses - out of 500 questioned - said they were sometimes too busy to help older people eat and drink.

Age Concern said 60% of these patients were at risk of malnourishment or deteriorating health. Those aged over 80 had a five times higher risk of malnutrition than those aged 50. Malnourished patients stay in hospital longer, are more likely to develop complications after surgery and have higher mortality.

from the Guardian

Today everyone talks about this but come on we can't pretend to be surprised. Anyone who has been to a hospital or has had a relative in hospital (I guess some hospitals are better than others, what I've seen and heard in London is pretty grim) would have known this already.
And now there are even less nurses around.

I would like to add another issue here. Elderly people that have to stay in hospital longer than necessary because their local authority fails to provide day care and cannot be discharged until something is provided for them. This is definitely a problem in my area for people that are too ill or disabled to look after themselves.
If they can look after themselves a bit, the opposite happens, they are discharged far too quickly to free up beds. Quite often NHS and the local authorities spend more energy and resources into trying to establish that it is not their duty (or not part of their targets in their current speech) to provide care for someone instead of doing something constructive. And for those put into care only 44% of homes meet standards.

I find that something is wrong when a society seems to focus only on people that can consume and produce. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned.