Posting has been light of late as I’ve been involved with other projects. Not the least of which was attempting to sort out a reputable removal company, to shift all our belongings north to the Michigan Upper Peninsula, this coming June.
Surely, not a difficult task, I hear you say?
Don’t believe it. It appears the moving trade is now riddled with snake-oil salesmen and scam artists, all out to relieve you of your hard-earned cash, and quite possibly, your most valuable possessions in the process.
The first mistake I made was using one of those, “Get three instant quotes” websites – “Orbitz Moving”, I believe it was. You know, one of those bright, shiny, websites with lots of happy, smiling, faces reminiscent of satisfied customers. Distantly reminiscent, in the case of this bunch, at least, judging by the vast numbers of dis-satisfied customers airing their grievances about the companies contracted to this outfit.
I’d used ‘Orbitz’ for many a flight booking in the past and always been satisfied with the service. Mistake number two was assuming some connection. First rule of the internet these days: never assume anything!
‘Orbitz Moving’ doesn’t move anybody. It simply passes information on to any nefarious moving firm prepared, no doubt, to cough up a percentage of the takings if you’re daft enough to sign with them.
Of course, my email inbox was inundated with offers, phony contracts, crazily low ‘estimates’, and voicemail messages from hard-hitting sales staff determined to entice me into their web.
It didn’t take too much research before I hit the ‘delete’ button on every one.
After eight hours or so of total time-wasting I eventually short-listed two that seemed reliable. I would have preferred a choice of three, but in today’s ‘make a fast buck and to hell with customer service’ America, there wasn’t one other I could find that didn’t have a host of complaints laid against them.
I was browsing blogs recently and one I hadn’t seen before attracted my attention. It belonged to a British doctor, a general practitioner (known in America as a ‘family doctor’).
One particular post caught my eye. It was a short, yet definitive, statement on Britain’s National Health Service, entitled – “Why The NHS Works”:
I saw a patient last week, who has recovered from major surgery. He has had brain surgery and is now likely to do very well. I am pleased. He is well.
The whole process worked beautifully. He was diagnosed quickly and effectively. He was assessed further at the local hospital who referred on to the Regional Centre where he was well looked after, nursed excellently, and when he came to see me, he and his wife were delighted.
He is an ordinary working-class bloke from Dullsville, who has been looked after.
His care, I reckon, would have cost around £200,000. He knows that. We, the healthy, paid for him to have his treatment.
This is the NHS that I joined as a Junior Doctor 36 years ago.
I get a bit fed up of politicians and journalists telling me that the NHS needs reform.
It blinking well doesn’t. What it needs is aforesaid politicians to go away and do something else with their time. I’d rather they dredged their moats, or tended to their duck houses.
Leave us alone.[1]
The British National Health Service is under attack yet again, by politicians who’ve no idea how to organize a piss-up in a brewery, let alone a complex organism like the NHS. The government is responding to pressure from corporate industry to privatize the NHS and move it towards the ‘American’ system.
For those still in any doubt, the ‘American’ system is one of the largest cash-cows in the United States for multinational drug and insurance companies, private hospitals, and certain medical professionals who’ve sold out their Hippocratic Oath in favor of a very fat bank balance.
Unfortunately, the ‘American’ system is a complete and utter disaster for the average patient, who stands to lose his home, belongings, in fact everything he owns, when the debt collector calls about his recent hospital bill for appendicitis or open heart surgery.
The doctor who wrote the post, highlighted above, estimated the cost of his patient’s treatment at about two hundred thousand British pounds, or $320,000. The patient paid nothing out of his own pocket. Every working person in Britain chipped in a few pence and paid his costs for him, just as he will do for others now that he’s fit to return to work.
The cost per person per month is minimal, a fraction of the charges imposed by even the most affordable of medical insurance companies in America (though, I’ve yet to discover one).
Recently, there’s been much ado from certain Republican members of Congress about the ‘Obama Healthcare Bill’, passed last year. They want it withdrawn. Killed. Dead.
In order they not be criticized for partaking of the (relatively) cheap medical insurance available to members of Congress, certain of them have refused it and taken out their own private insurance, like most American citizens have to do if they need cover.
Yesterday, one of those Republican members was interviewed on the Public Broadcasting Service. I believe it was Joe Walsh of Illinois. He was asked how much it cost to insure himself, his wife, and one child, given that he had turned down the Federal policy.
His answer was: $1,200 per month. For the sake of British readers, whose jaws I can guarantee will drop, that’s 750 British pounds every month.
Of course, Walsh can well afford it. A Congress member earns $170,000 a year -just over 106,000 British pounds. He was asked how working class people could afford to pay those sorts of sums.
Being a politician, his response was way too long to reproduce here, and anyway, it completely failed to address the question.
Politicians in America have much in common with their European counterparts. In particular, allegiance to corporations who willingly subsidize their already overblown salaries.
There are many Americans who’ve been hoodwinked into believing ‘socialist’ medicine is inspired by the Devil. Quite why the Devil would want to heal free-of-charge is beyond my comprehension. It sounds more like something Jesus of Nazareth might do.
Socialist medicine: Where the healthy pay a little…so all who are sick may get well.
I will admit to having no interest in American football. Neither do I delight in the bombardment of corporate advertising aimed at me via the US TV media. Consequently, I guess I’m something of a non-starter where matters relating to this year’s Super Bowl are concerned.
Normally, this strangely hallowed event would pass unnoticed in the Adam’s household, replaced by some suitable feature film or previously recorded documentary, or ignored, as music or computer served to provide more suitable entertainment.
Last night, however, it was the Green Bay Packers.
On arriving in America eight years ago, this name kept cropping up. I assumed Green Bay to be some industrial town employing an unusually high number of factory hands in the shipping department.
Eventually, I was informed of my mistake by my wife – a long-standing ‘Packers’ fan. She had developed a liking for the team while watching games on TV with her young son, and even though he’s now grown to manhood, the pair will still exchange ‘Packers’ titbits whenever they get together.
Consequently, last night the Super Bowl could not be casually tossed from memory in favor of a bit of Beethoven or a selection of latest blog postings. It was there; it was real; it was ‘The Packers’, so it had to be watched.
Let me make it quite clear from the start, my wife is not the sort of person to demand my attendance at the TV screen just because she expects my company. Not at all. For the first three ‘quarters’ (I believe that’s the terminology) I retired to my den, dabbled on the guitar, and wrote a post for Sparrow Chat.
It’s not that I’m against sport. It just doesn’t interest me. Also, any game that is composed of four, fifteen minute quarters, yet lasts four hours, is highly suspicious to my mind.
I’ve watched football games in Europe, what Americans laughingly call ‘soccer’, and they last ninety minutes, plus a fifteen minute break at half-time. Just occasionally, if there’s no decider, an extra thirty minutes will be added, but that’s fine; it’s in the rules.
So far as I’m aware there’s nothing in the American Football rules to say a game must last four hours. Especially as, for half of that time, there’s no game, only adverts. God alone knows what the players do during the advertising breaks that seem to occur every two or three minutes, and last for five. According to my wife, who knows about these things, they probably “huddle and talk tactics”.
Out of a four hour game the actual time spent ‘in action’ is probably less than twenty minutes, so two hours of tactic talking in between the ‘action’ seems somewhat excessive in the circumstances. Not so much a game as a board meeting.
After three hours, or so, I was getting a bit lonely in my den so wandered into the living room to inquire after the score. Apparently, it was very exciting as the ‘Packers’ were in the lead and it was the last quarter, with under ten minutes to go.
I decided I could probably suffer ten minutes of lumbering Michelin men so settled down on the couch. Half an hour later, I was becoming more and more frustrated as the game kept interrupting the advertising, which was infinitely more interesting than the sport.
I began to mentally record the number of advertisers who relied on violence to get their products across. Soon, I wished I hadn’t bothered. I’m usually adept at mental arithmetic, but the numbers became too great.
By the end, while everyone else was jumping up and down celebrating the Packers’ triumph, I was still wondering what on earth America was inflicting on its kids, most of whom would have been up watching the great game.
And, finally, who was that God-awful yodeler who murdered the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’? Never mind that she fluffed the words, it would have been adequate had she sung in tune.
Conmen on the move
Don’t dare get sick
Not-so-Super Bowl