MSN "news"
I usually read the BBC website for news these days, but when I check my hotmail, the MSN headlines come up and I am often drawn to them. I don't know why I read them, they are usually ridiculously rubbish, sensationalist or just plain wrong.

Take the following story for example:

99 dead in Baghdad suicide blasts

I have seen this on the TV and in the Times that my hubby bought (for the rugby). There is another dubious line in there (or several really) Two mentally disabled women strapped with remote-control explosives - possibly used as unwitting suicide bombers

Please explain how you can unwittingly commit suicide in this fashion? It's called murder! It was remote controlled bombs! FFS.

I hate biased, altered and sensationalised information on current affairs. Where does the truth hide these days?

Cross posted to my own journal.

Current Mood: crabbit

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Northern Rock
The Northern Rock story grinds my gears.

There’s two main reasons for this, what it says about the “Great British Public” and what it says about our economy.

( Rant…Collapse )

Current Mood: angry

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Poor Patient:Nurse Ratios in Hospital Wards
This is an excuse to publicise a new e-petition!

It is:

For the government to set a statutory minimum ratio of nurses to patients on hospital wards, with penalties for NHS trusts who fail to achieve these ratios.

Because:

Put simply, if a hospital ward is short-staffed, patients can die. A growing body of research shows a direct link between levels of nurse staffing on a ward and rates of patient mortality. Patients on understaffed wards are more likely to develop hospital-acquired infections, more likely to become undernourished or dehydrated, and more likely to develop pressure ulcers.

In addition, understaffed wards make nurses more likely to become demoralised and “burnt out”, causing the quality of their work to deteriorate, or for them to leave nursing altogether. Either of these outcomes harm patients indirectly.

Sign it here: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/nurseratios/

Learn more at Mental Nurse

Also, spread the word!

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What winds me up.......
Everything to do with Friendly Fire 

For one thing, what a ridiculous term. What the feck is friendly about it?

And why does it seem it is always the Americans who accidentally kill our soldiers?

It's depressing and annoying enough hearing about the poor bastards that are dying in Iraq, without hearing about the Brits being killed by the country we are supporting!

Bring them home FFS.

Fuckin friendly fire.............my arse.

*rants*

Current Mood: annoyed

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Hospitals and stupid management decisions
One of the Hospitals near me are pushing for the outright ban of smoking in the grounds. This is probably true of lots of hospitals, but will depend on what extent it is enforced.

The theory is that there is to be no smoking in the the car parks (and in the cars). Patients and visitors may regularly flout this, standing at the front door. Staff, however, are another matter.

Since the ban was implemented, staff have been sitting in their cars hiding away, filling their ashtrays and smelling more like an ashtray than previously when smoking in the open air. Hospital management did not like this. They enforced the rule that staff must not smoke in their uniform at all.

Fair enough perhaps, but....

The part that makes no sense and that I find rather infuriating, is that the same hospital do not enforce their staff to change in and out of their uniforms before starting and finishing a shift. Almost all staff come and go in their uniform. There is a huge amount of money spent on awareness, training and procedures in reducing Hospital Acquired Infections, just look at the website for hand washing from the Scottish Executive that reportedly cost silly money to produce.

Why have they decided to worry about the smoking nurses, yet leave all of them and the non-smoking nurses to wander in and out of work, in their cars, on buses, trains, shops, supermarkets, into their homes in their uniform? But if you are caught having a fly puff still in uniform you may face disciplinary action?

THAT is what grinds my gears at the moment!



Current Mood: crabbit

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Hi, I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC
I'm an Apple convert. I used to swear my PCs and swear at Macs. Now I'm a Mac user, I whinge all the time when I have to go back to using PCs, and try to convert anyone who'll listen to the altar of Steve Jobs.

But Apple have pissed me off today.

I updated Tiger to 10.4.10 the other day; as usual it was a seamless transition, automated, and no problems.

But today I plugged my camera in to transfer some pics. It wouldn't detect it. No worries with the 10.4.9 Powerbook downstairs. Tried the iPod - wouldn't detect it either. Or my USB memory stick. But all worked with the PB. Aha. Unfortunately the PB was installing 10.4.10. Eek.

10.4.10 on the Powerbook? Worked fine.

So what the chuff is going on?

I decide to phone up Apple, as they are usually very helpful. But they weren't. The geordie boy on the end of the phone was very polite, but told me that my iMac is too old to qualify for phone support. Bastards.

He directed me to the website, from whence I had come. LOADS of punters with the same problem. No solutions.

Advice was to go back to 10.4.9 - which is fine, but actually you have to re-install from the original DVD back to 10.4.0, then update through to 10.4.9, and there's always the chance that you lose all yer data as yer doin it.

So I backed up the whole computer - difficult when I can't plug in my 120GB USB BACKUP DRIVE!!!!!. Took me 2 hours.

Then I thought - why not try to reset the PRAM and NVRAM? Worth a shot.

It worked, of course.

I've told the forums of people desperate for a solution what I did to solve the dilema, and hopefully they'll be sorted.

Why couldn't geordie boy have just said - "Ah yes, reset the NVRAM, canny lad"? Eh? I appreciate that the iMac is old, but the update is a week old, so surely they can give support?

Bastards.

Well. It grinds my gears, for today at least.

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Lydia Playfoot and The Silver Ring Thing
I’m a woolly liberal. I like to stand up for repressed minorities. I support underdogs, lost causes and the hopeless (Just look at my football team).

Yet today I’m ignoring the obvious injusticies in the world. What really grindyourgears is Lydia Playfoot?

WHO? The daughter of Phil Playfoot and his wife, both of whom work for The Silver Ring Thing . Which is basically a Christian organisation that sells you a ring that reminds you not to have pre-marital sex. Who needs chastity belts or strong morals - these days we can only save our virginities with a thirteen quid ring.

OK, so far it’s fairly unobjectionable. Teen pregnancies are A Bad Thing in most people’s eyes, anything that helps reduce them etc etc... (you get the idea)

”The Silver Ring Thing leadership recognizes that the distribution of condoms or the practice of "safe-sex" will not ensure protection from the physical, emotional and spiritual problems resulting from sexual activity among teens”

Now, if you look at the statistics, teen pregnancies are lower in the sexually liberal Netherlands than they are in moralistic Texas (where Sex Education is no more informative than a strict “gonnae no dae that”!). So, pragmatically, I have to believe in what works, and abstinence (as the only message) doesn’t seem to work very well. It only means that when teenagers inevitably have sex for the first time, they don’t know what to do, or have access to contraception, with inevitable problems. Hey ho.

But the thing that REALLY grindyourgears is Lydia and her parents. Young Ms Playfoot leaves school this month. Yet she’s wasting their educational budget by taking the school to court for religious discrimination. That’s right, by “banning” her from wearing her “chastity ring”, her human rights are being repressed. Do the school have better things to spend their money on (rather than lawyers to fight a case about this ring)?

Can you hear my gears grinding from where you are?

Human Rights are important things. The right to freely worship, the right to participate in free and fair elections and the right to basic healthcare etc are things millions of people in this world lack.

Despite the Catholic Church , Amnesty International etc help secure these much needed rights for people. These are Human Rights. People talking about the “human right” to a seat on a busy train, to smoke in a pub and to tell racist jokes trivialises genuine human rights that other people don’t have.

Now, call me old fashioned, but when the United Nations sits down to provide for Human Rights, the right to wear a “chastity ring” isn’t going to make the top ten. Yet Lydia and her parents have used this as the basis for a marketing campaign for their Operation. Sorry, I mean “Lydia and her parents have used this as the basis to complain about religions discrimination". Other kids at the school are allowed to wear religious garments that are central to their faith like the Muslim headscarf (no Burkas etc are tollerated). There’s no mention in the Bible of “Chastity rings” as an essential Christian jewellery, and their campaign only marginalizes ‘mainstream’ Christians further, makes Christians look even more like sexually obsessed repressed nutters...

She’s leaving school later this month, so it’s hardly important. Chastity rings are a modern marketing gimmick rather than a central tenet of Christianity. Her parents are using their sixteen year old daughter as a marketing tool for their business. This mention of “human rights” and “religious discrimination” completely trivialises those who lack rights worldwide and aren’t free to practise their faith. And my gears are grinding like buggery…

Current Mood: angry

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Another F-Word, Done.
Not content with ruining:

"yes"
"you know that"
and
"fuck"

for everyone, Ramsay has now started saying "no" and the end of sentences.

Sara Cox looked pretty hot though, yes?

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Theatres
I was at the Edinburgh Playhouse on Friday night, watching Guys and Dolls.

I love the Playhouse, but.....

What gets my goat are 2 things.

1. The fact that it wasn't anywhere near full. That must be a bit crap for the performers, and the clapping and wotnot is quieter than it should be.

Why don't they drop the price so more people are willing to pay money to go? I was at the front of the balcony with a really good view, (even if they all looked small) and these were mid-price seats. £29 each by the time you add on extra charges. (greedy bastards charging £3.50 for collection of tickets!)

2. The arseholes that go to these shows always seem to be sitting near me. Last time I went there were a bunch of drunken idiots that were hanging over the balcony and making loud noises. Thankfully they were chucked out before the interval, before someone pushed them over!

This time there were 3 females behind me who were obviously Darius fans, with no idea what Guys and Dolls is about. When he started singing "Luck be a Lady Tonight" one of them loudly said "oh, no fuckin way" and commented everytime he was on, especially at the end when he was a missionary!  Not very classy.

One of them had their legs hanging over the seat in front and they were in and out at the bar. Do they really need to sell alcohol during the performance? I don't see the appeal of spending so much money on tickets then missing half of it as you go to the bar.

They got several dirty looks from me and my mother and if they had made 1 more comment I would have been speaking out, which never ends well, last time I did that I nearly got smacked - by a guy!

I would like to see more shows at the Playhouse, or in general, but at those prices it isn't very likely. It's the same with the Rugby. I went to see the All Blacks v Scotland a while ago and it wasn't full either, when really it should be, but, again, it's overpriced.


That's my ranting over for today.  :-)

Current Mood: crabbit

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Virgin Trains (and no, it's not a rant about overcrowding, delays or ticket prices)
Virgin trains run every hour from Sheffield to Edinburgh (via Newcastle). It’s a handy service for a Scot living in “Steel City”. They just don’t want you to know about it...

When they privatised the railways a decade ago, people worried that the “network” would fragment, and that one company wouldn’t tell you about “rival” trains on that route.

Fair point, sometimes they do (e.g. the Scotrail timetable from Aberdeen to Edinburgh includes Virgin and GNER services), sometimes they don’t (the Transpennine timetable from Newcastle to Leeds doesn’t show the Virgin trains that run on the same route).

But what I never expected was that one company wouldn’t tell you about other trains on the same line that it runs.

Ah, they may run every hour from Sheffield to Edinburgh, but that’s really an “Orange” train every two hours and a “green” train every two hours. Confused? Same route, same stops (Wakefield, Leeds, York, Darlo, Durham, Newcastle and Alnmouth/ Berwick or Dunbar). But the “orange” trains have come from Bristol, and the “green” ones from Reading. Which makes f- all difference to their route north of Birmingham, but (in the minds of Virgin trains) means we can’t have one leaflet with all the times on them.

It’s bad enough that Virgin don’t show GNER trains and GNER don’t show Virgin ones (they run on the same track for 200 miles from York to Edinburgh), but when Virgin won’t show you all of the trains they run, that really grinds my gears!

Current Mood: angry

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Use yer legs, lazy arse.
stylishbastard posted a gear grinder earlier, and it's reminded me of another one of mine.

Being a push chair pusher there is little more irritating in this sad, desperate life, than waiting for the *very small* lift in a shopping centre (Such as the Wellgate in Beanoland) with your pushchair and child incumbent, only to find when the door opens that it's full of fully ambulatory people. No pushchairs. No wheelchairs. No crutches. Just kids, fat people, and lazy people.

I wouldn't mind so much if they got out of the lift once they see the pushchair, but they stand there, gawping at us, irritated that by requesting the lift to stop at my floor I have slowed their journey to MacDonalds.

The escalators are RIGHT NEXT TO THE LIFT. You don't have to move on an escalator - it's a moving platform that moves you upstairs. In fact, you have to walk further to reach the sodding lift. And the lift is slower.

The other day a lady in a wheelchair was in front of me in the queue, and the lift came twice, full of ambulatory lazoids, none of whom got out to let her in. On the third visit, I got the rage. I lost the head, completely. They got out pretty sharpish.

I probably need therapy. But it really grinds my gears.

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BMW drivers
Now they literally grind my gears. What I want to know is at what stage of the purchasing process do owners have their brains removed? Or more precisely the areas of the brain that contain
a) All knowledge of the Highway Code
b) All consideration for other drivers.

Is it the very fact that you are considering buying a BMW that wipes these areas of the brain clean? Or is it once you have signed the purchase agreement perhaps? Is it done by micro-chip inplant? Or is it something in the tea that you are given while in the showroom looking at models?

It seems that as soon as you are in the driver's seat of a product from the Bavarian Motor Works you no longer have to stop at junctions and check for other traffic - being in a BMW means you can move straight along. You are also allowed to bob and weave between lanes of traffic without indication (in fact, have we ever seen BMW fitted with indicators?). Being a BMW driver means you are no longer obliged to let other traffic into the lane in which you are driving. And if some other kind soul lets you into the flow of traffic no indication of thanks is required to that person, as BMW will send them some kind of letter of thanks for you...

Another skill wiped from the ability palette of drivers of BMWs is that of parking within lines marked for parking spaces in car parks. Once the BMW is purchased you are are entitled to take up two spaces it seems - or even the disabled parking if all the other free spaces are too far away for you to walk.

I'll stop now, for the sake of my blood pressure.

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Ramsay in a supercar...... Done.
Gordon Ramsay - I like his food, I really do. Some of my favourite receipies, actually. I like his show. I don't mind all the effing and jeffing, I really don't. I respect him for the bit where he gets "beaten" in the celebrity challenges. But. Where the chuff does he get off driving a Lambourgini Gallardo Spyder through Fife? Seriously? What an arse.

I get to drive around Fife in an 8 year old Skoda Felicia. Yes?

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Whaaaaaaaaat?
Have I only just noticed this? Has it always been like this? When did they change the name? If it's always been like this, why don't they change the name to SPELL IT PROPERLY.

http://www.heinz.co.uk/products/heinz_baked_beanz.aspx

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You know what else grinds my gears?
When idiot parents walk nonchalantly into the road without looking, with their child's pram thrust out in front. You know...into the traffic.

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Unlimited
You know what really Grind My Gears…

“Unlimited” offers, that aren’t.

Take my mobile phone, for example. The “package” I’m on gives me “unlimited” text messages. Except that it’s subject to a “fair use policy”, or some similar jargon. Which means that there *is* a limit (the young lady in the shop claimed it was 100 texts a day).

Now, there’s no way I’d reach that limit, so realistically it hardly matters. But it’s *a* limit. Which means it’s not “unlimited”. And that grinds my gears.

Current Mood: angry

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You know what grinds my gears?
All the Indian takeaways near me seem to package the curry in little plastic boxes when everyone knows that the tin-based packaging is much nicer.

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Gets My Goat
The Firth of Forth is crossed my two main bridges - the Kincardine Bridge, and the Forth Road Bridge. The Kincardine bridge is MUCH further up-stream, consequently the Forth Road Bridge is FAR busier. It connects Edinburgh to Fife, and consequently the whole of the North East of Scotland. Particularly, it's the way I can get to Edinburgh at the weekends (Or any other time, I suppose).

Do you know what really grinds my gears? The road bridge needs re-surfacing, and they've decided that 9-5 on Saturday and Sunday is the PERFECT time to do the resurfacing works. So, for all the hours that matter at the weekend, there's a constant 40 - 60 minute tailback both sides of the FRB. This affects access to Deep Sea World, where we went today - so I had to negotiate a detour through the delights of Rosyth, and even then I had to queue to get off the M90 at junction 3.

Why the weekend? I mean, I undersatnd that they don't want to do the works at rush hour during the week, but what's wrong with 10 - 3 during the week? Or NIGHT TIME!!!!! When they built new flyovers on the A90 Perth to Dundee stretch they did ALL the work overnight, so there was minimal disruption to the flow of traffic. That's Dundonian thinking, that is. Not fuckwit Edinburgh thinking.

It really grinds my gears.

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You know what really grinds my gears?
The wrapping for electical peripherals. They're welded shut with some kind of Vulcan Death Glue. The fact that you can't get into them without a stanley knife is bad enough, but there's more. The manufacturers say that they put their stuff into these ridiculous packets to protect the kit, making it tamper proof. Great! But what if it doesn't work when you finally get into the packaging?

1) "It was damaged in the opening process" - of course it bloody was, I had to use a bazooka to open the sodding packaging, of course it got a slight dink.

2) "Send it back in the original packaging, at you can have a replacement" - ARE THEY HAVING A LAUGH? Original packaging? The original packaging I've got in 200 bits all over the floor.

And woe betide you if you actually want to have a feel of the thing you want to buy - open the packaging, and you have to buy it.

And I once got a really nasty cut from opening the packaging on an SD card.

And that's what really grinds my gears. Today.

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