THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

fuddle

Aw Greenbee, I can't believe I've seen your grandfather. He looks every bit a GP that isn't stressed and cares.

greenbee

I have a copy of the programme that my dad bought from the BBC years ago. It's interesting. Have PM'd you more info...

I'm in Norway at the moment and there have been some interesting discussions re. Brexit. They think we're nuts - we have very good rights in relation to the EU as we were in at the beginning. They pay, have to comply but have NO rights. Most of them would like to be properly in (at least, the people I see through work).

monnagran

The NHS and Education are two of my hobby horses so I will spare you the pain of me sounding off.

Roughly speaking I think that the same mistakes have been made in both fields. Namely, too big, too centralised and too impersonal.

Small local hospitals have been closed and now, even for relatively minor procedures you are whisked off to a hospital the size of a small town miles away. Here you are one of thousands, your relatives have to drive many miles to see you and pay a small fortune in car parking fees or, if car less, spend half a day trying to get to you on public transport. As my brother said sadly when my aged father was in one of these state of the art institutions, "They are no longer people , they are bodies being processed."
Bed blocking is a real problem because there is nowhere for the old people to go.
So this wonderful hospital has all the latest equipment and expertise which cannot be used to its fullest potential because a good proportion of the patients don't need to be there. Madness.

Schools are similar. Tiny children are bussed miles every day to join several hundred other children. They must not be hugged by their teachers if they are distressed, and the teachers can't rub a bit of "magic cream" on to a bump or scraze to make them feel comforted or that they matter. The children in these huge schools are like the patients in hospital, only instead of bodies being processed, they are minds being processed, and tested and tested to distraction.

There are good things of course. The wonders of modern medicine and the extraordinary operations that take place are amazing. People are alive now who would not have survived years ago, but a bit of humanity seems to have been lost.

Likewise schools. Things are very different, no child is hit or forced to write with the 'wrong' hand. Children are no longer afraid of their teachers, they are afraid of each other or their teachers are afraid of them. A quiet or nervous child can sink into the background and be lost in the crowd. We no longer have an education system that is the envy of the world.

Oops! When I said I would not start on my hobby horse I was lying.

Cheapskate

monnagran wrote: »

Schools are similar. Tiny children are bussed miles every day to join several hundred other children. They must not be hugged by their teachers if they are distressed, and the teachers can't rub a bit of "magic cream" on to a bump or scraze to make them feel comforted or that they matter. The children in these huge schools are like the patients in hospital, only instead of bodies being processed, they are minds being processed, and tested and tested to distraction.

Likewise schools. Things are very different, no child is hit or forced to write with the 'wrong' hand. Children are no longer afraid of their teachers, they are afraid of each other or their teachers are afraid of them. A quiet or nervous child can sink into the background and be lost in the crowd. We no longer have an education system that is the envy of the world.

Oops! When I said I would not start on my hobby horse I was lying.

This is one of my passions, Monnagran!! Our 3 adult children (31, 28 &25) went through the system 'OK', but always felt there was something lacking. Fast forward to our youngest two (10 & 7.5), and there's a whole world of difference, so much so that we're de-registering them from school to home educate. The HE community is huge in our town, lots of different types of family, doing things in a way that's best for their children - can't wait to have some autonomy over this part of our lives, at least!!

A xo

greenbee

monna - my brother is a GP and his practice have recently taken over the community hospital. It mostly does what the old 'cottage hospitals' did - gives people somewhere to recuperate rather than blocking beds in the big 'centres of excellence'. Quite a lot of the consultants also run clinics there - less frequently, but I use it as I'm guaranteed to see the consultant not a registrar. They've had to fight very hard to keep it, hence making it part of the GP practice.

thriftwizard

Thank you, Cheapskate! PM'd you...

monnagran

Cheapskate. One day I will bore you with tales of the school I started and ran. Originally I started it for school phobics and children who just didnt fit into the system, of which I had seen quite a few while teaching in state schools. It was completely off the wall and very successful educationally though less so financially.
There is a large contingent of home educators on the Island and they get together frequently.

Greenbee. How wonderful! Cottage hospitals should be the core of the NHS. Like village and local schools they should be the centre of the community and the first port of call for residents.
They don't need all the frills and expensive gizmos. If they are needed then a trip to the glossy metropolis hospital is justified. All most folk want is a place that they recognise, near home, comfortable and efficient and above all caring. My own father ended his days in a big city, university teaching hospital. All bright and shiny and bristling with computers. It was appalling. I won't go into details it is still upsetting 6 years after that dreadful place killed him.
So good for your brother. I wish there were more like him.

Most of my prepping is to keep myself as healthy as possible So that I can survive independently for as long as possible.

thriftwizard

I started it for school phobics and children who just didnt fit into the system, of which I had seen quite a few while teaching in state schools

Oh Monnagran, I wish there were more like you! One of mine was "school phobic" - actually she has an almost-invisible form of autism, which made the normal happy bustle and ever-changing scenarios of school life pure torture for her - and we'd have lost her into the care system if I hadn't de-registered her and home-educated her, and eventually her sister too. One of the curious things you run up against when HE'ing is that most of your teacher friends suddenly treat you as if you'd developed the plague or taken up heresy, rather than run up hard against an inflexible and dogmatic system. HE can work very well if the parents are lucky enough to be in a position to do it - as I was - but how I would have loved to find a school that understood her difficulties and could genuinely help her make the most of her fierce intelligence & emerging talents!

The conversation about the NHS reminds me that yesterday I talked to my mother's GP and realised that she'd totally missed something quite significant, because a test had been ordered by another doctor whilst she was on holiday, so the resulting pictures had gone back to that doctor and she simply hadn't known there was anything to be looking for. All big systems (NHS, education, big businesses, multi-national governments) have their blind spots & failures; the bigger the system & the more experts try to streamline it and make it more efficient, the more holes develop in the underlying infrastructure, and the more people fall through those holes as the systems get more & more stressed, as these GPs have been since another surgery simply transferred all their patients to them & closed down. So as subjects to these giant systems, as all of us are to some extent in one way or another, it truly is up to us to look after ourselves, be aware, keep questioning and prep away for the day when "they" simply can't cope any longer. That hospital malware thing was a warning shot; one we'd all do well to heed.

monnagran

Thriftwizard. I think you have hit the nail on the head when you say "it's up to us to look after ourselves."

The welfare state, while doing sterling work, particularly in the early days, has had the unfortunate side effect of bringing up the last couple of generations to think that someone else has the responsibility of sorting out their lives. Something that never occurred to my generation, (born pre-war) and would have astonished my parent's generation.

I feel sorry for young people today who know all about their rights but have the haziest knowledge of their responsibilities. Heaven help them.
This doesn't apply to all of them of course, but it does seem to be the prevailing attitude.

Karmacat

pollyanna_26 wrote: »

We have had a mountain of news over recent years and a useful thing is to always look behind the headlines and then look deeper .

Totally agree.

The fact is structure is falling apart . I have zero tolerance for those who abuse the system either health or benefits wise but I do believe the genuine are living with the fear culture which has grown around that safety net .
Some of you will be aware I have to fight that while trying to keep my daughter seeing a reason to go on .

I'm one of those that didn't know this, pollyanna, very sorry to hear about your daughter's struggles

I have never been a person who gets angry . I was raised to recognise injustice and do what I could to help make the world a better place .
Anger is a negative emotion which changes nothing but I am and have for some time been very angry .

I have a slightly different take on anger. I think it can be used positively, up to a point - I'm thinking of the various campaigns for social justice, for instance.

I think the tipping point was the announcement that Tory mps who lost their seats in the election were being given financial support by the government as many of them were in financial difficulties !!!
You couldn't make that up . That wont be a whipround in the house that will come out of public money .

Oh bleep. I hadn't heard that. Now *that* makes me angry, yes!

With you on the herbs Lyn with proper knowledge can sort certain things .

Me too - I'm working on that in the background all the time.

monnagran wrote: »

Cottage hospitals should be the core of the NHS. Like village and local schools they should be the centre of the community and the first port of call for residents.

In one area I used to live, they started calling a big clinic-type place a polyclinic - everything you can think of that was supposed to be local was there. Don't know if its still running, but it had to have a new name - perish the thought that it might be called a cottage hospital!

Most of my prepping is to keep myself as healthy as possible So that I can survive independently for as long as possible.

Ditto! In the back of my mind is also that I'm not terribly healthy in some ways, but my sister is, and she'd need my stuff for herself and her adult kids.

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