Penguin68

I imagine it's a plot centred around North Dulwich Station - all the twitter topologies in that map have been given 'mountain' names (Top, Tor etc.). Possibly JAGS girls are extensive twitterers!

There is also a system of fitting a magnet to the water inlet pipe from the main which removes rubbish coming in. I attach a couple of links which I have googled randomly (I am not advocating or recomending either supplier, they are thus simply for illustration.) I do know British Gas install such systems. http://www.waterimp.co.uk/ http://www.discoverymagnets.co.uk/ecoflow_water.htm

Underhill Road into Whateley Road takes out a whole loop of Lordship Lane and is a good connect into Barry (and hence the Rye) and Crystal Palace Roads. 10 years ago (perhaps longer) it became a bus route - previously just a residential street. Local drivers all seem to know this.

And when foxes come into my house, eat my cornflakes and bread, hide in the cupboards and pee and poo all over the surfaces I'll stop being so indulgent - as farmers in the country are quite rightly when foxes get into their hen coops. Mice are pests, foxes, for me, aren't. As long as foxes stay in the garden or the street, they're fine with me (actually, so are mice).

Don't worry about routers - they're hardware used for fixed line systems - I was just using this as an example - they do the same job as your web-stick. Mobile connectivity is a bit of a problem in ED - hills mean that you lose line-of-sight with mobile masts, and increased activity means contention with other users (each cell has a finite number of transactions it can handle, even in the packet-switched data transfer arena). Priority seems sometimes to be given to users who are actually mobile (moving) handing 'calls' over from cell to cell. If you have time-of-day problems it may be about contention - when at times of heavy usage you are competing for signal from your local cell with other users. It is possible that your new neighbours are using something which is interferring with your signal (they may even be contending for the same signal as you!) If you are aware of when they are in or out you could try to see if that makes a difference. They could also be using some sorts of wireless technologies themselves which is causing interference and drop-outs. If your system is portable (i.e. a laptop) it would be a good idea to try it somewhere else entirely - that way, if it does work, you can rule out hardware or software problems of your own.

1. I assume that you have tried to use the mobile internet web-stick outside ED and it works there? (i.e. you don't have a hardware fault?) 2. Have you installed any new software on your system recently? If you have, try disabling it and see if the stick works - you may have a system conflict. Has your comms software updated itself; sometimes that causes problems as well. Are you running the most up-to-date comms software for your system? (I remember when an i-tunes software update disabled my router). 3. Has the topology around you changed recently (building works, scaffolding etc.) which could be causing interference? 4. Have you checked with T-Mobile to see if there are any issues with their loal cell transmitter (they may even have shifted its location). 5. Do you have good security on your machine; could you have picked up a virus? Just some suggestions

They don't belong in the city as they don't play an activ part in the food chain, where as in the countryside they'll no doubt have a fair share of rabbits Foxes do eat worms, but also rodents - it is said that if you have foxes living in your garden you won't also have rats nearbye - which I would consider somewhat of a bonus. They do spread disease, mainly to each other, it must be said - I have heard no evidence of foxes generally spreading disease to humans. I find birds far more wearisome as to noise, they scream their heads off from first light and even before - many, for instance the corvids, have most unnatractive calls - why don't you want these gone as well? - cities are obviously only for people - nasty wildlife should all be exterminated, they all carry disease, or are noisy, are otherwise irksome. Personally, I find the fact that comparatively large mammals such as foxes can be wandering about the streets rather heart-warming. Their noise at night I find disturbing only because the screams when first heard sound too human, as soon as I have identified it as foxes I can happily relax. And, unlike human created night noises (shouting, loud music, fireworks) I don't get angry about the foxes being thoughtless and selfish, since they're not. People should know better, foxes shoudn't.

Since toads eat lots of things like slugs which ruin your plants they should be being encouraged, not made to take offence - you are really lucky to have toads in your garden. If you use slug pellets the poisoned slugs will be eaten by toads and kill them - which removes your free and helpful little garden helpers.

Which exchange are you on? - 8299 was uprated to 'up to 20Mgb' about 20 days ago - there is a settling-in time, when you can get drop-outs, but I am getting 13Mgb on a regular basis. There are a number of technical reasons why speeds can fall, but these aren't normally time dependent - that would suggest a contention issue - but it shouldn't be over a 12 hour period - BT's own ads suggest a peak around 7.00pm in residential areas. I would wait until BT complete their diagnostics - if there is a fault external to your premises it can lie in the local loop (wire overhead or underground to your property) in flexibility points (pillars and cabinets where lines come together - sometimes these can end-up cross wired) or on the line-card in your exchange. There are numbers of speed measuring programmes (BT's own desk-top diagnostic tool offers one) where you can test your speed - of course to get a useful reading you have to close all other applications. One classic speed consumer is if your system is 'infected' by a virus and has become part of a 'bot-net' unknowingly sending out spam - that will slow things down dramatically from your perspective when you try to run applications for yourself, but I had not heard that these were time dependent. You can check by closing all applications and seeing whether there is much network activity going on with diagnostic tools.

I had not realised that DMC was substantialy staffed by salaried doctors. When you read of GPs earning in the many hundreds of thousands that is normally from practices with many salaried doctors - partners can expect to earn around ?100k+ a year or so in a partnership - salaried doctors earn more like ?50-?60k (sometimes less if young and from overseas)- so if you have many salaried staff as a partner you are clearing (say) ?40k for doing nothing except employ people - have a big enough practice with perhaps only one 'partner' and you can really wack your earnings up - some GP partners even manage very high earnings with very little actual doctoring done by them at all. When you are running a 'business' like this you may have little real contact with patients, and the salaried doctors little interest in improving the way the practice works (as they get no benefit from that, unlike a partner). I am not suggesting that DMC is run in this way - but some practices certainly are. It is rather the way the Church of England used to be, with absentee vicars employing poorly paid curates to do their job, whilest trousering the tithes and benefices themselves and never visiting the parish at all. When we talk about the 'National' Health we always forget that GPs have always been either self employed contractors to the NHS or salaried staff working for these self employed contractors. They have never been directly employed by the state, unlike those working in hospitals.

Sophiesofa wrote: I just don't see why if this is such a wonderful solution why they/all GPs don't already use one. Sadly, I believe, that they don't because, for the doctors, the system is working - they never have to wait for patients, there's always one there waiting until the end of surgery, they are not worried about patient inconvenience and they don't want the bother of capturing the appropriate data and allowing receptionists to operate a dynamic system. The system they operate is simple (some might say mindless - as in the application of the punishment for late attendance) doesn't require any, or much, training and, as I have said, from their perspective works. It just doesn't from ours.

I don't think anyone, unless they have asked DMC, can say whether they see 6 patients each hour I have already said I don't go to DMC, but in the surgeries I have attended appointments are normally offered 'on' the 10 minutes (10:00; 10:10; 10:20 etc.) - hence my suspicion that the appointments are slotted in 6 to an hour. Simple record keeping can tell you for instance whether there is seasonal variation in consultation times and of 'averages' for groups of patients (say the elderly, the very young etc.). A dynamic allocation system would then allocate time based on type of patient/ time of year. A doctor with a lot of time-consuming appointments would be booking fewer in a given period than one with many quick in and outs. It is the 'one-size-fits-all' approach which leads to queues; as does 'targets' (must see 20 patients in 4 hours). This is actually a very simple queueing problem, a programmer and a statistician could very easily produce a workable application for this - indeed I suspect, as I have said, that such applications exist off-the-shelf and just need customising. There are always problems when patients expect to see a particular doctor at a particular time (both of their choice) but generally where there is some patient flexibility these things can be sorted.

sophiesofa wrote: Sometime my appointment has taken 2 mins, sometimes 20 mins so there's no way of timing everything perfectly at a doctors. Yes, and over time your various appointments will have an average - as quoted currently by you that is, over 2 appointments, 11 minutes - about the amount I was quoting earlier (12 minutes) - that is what statistical averaging is all about. On the occasions when you are having an 20 minuter an alternative sophiesofa will be slipping out in 2. Of course, at different times of year averages may differ, as they will with different types of patient - hence my suggestion for a slightly more sensitive algorithm to be used than a 'one-size-fits-all' allocation. If a doctor plans to see 20 patients in a 4 hour session on average he/ she will be able to fit them in in the planned time - although individual appointments may over-run, and on occasion patients will have to wait, but not by a large amount and not on every occasion. My belief is that patients are being scheduled at 6 an hour (one every 10 minutes) when the reported run-rate by most people here suggests 5 an hour is more appropriate.

I am guessing all bets are now off on this, as the Government drops the 'see in 48 hours' target for GPs. Unless some other satisfaction target is introduced we will be back to 2 week booking for surgery visits. If you are actually ill, in 2 weeks you are either better (so you don't go to the surgery and are a 'no show') or much worse, so you are already in hospital/ the undertakers. The only ones turning up will be the malingerers or the worried well. Hey ho.

Sadly the NOMIS figures - which are trended estimates or survey based (they come from multiple sources) do not publish (readily) significance ranges (which at least on the survey based figures they should). They also include in their 'available for employment' figures adults 16+, but do not overtly exclude from these figures those 16-21 in full time education - an increasingly large number as University entrants stagger towards 45% nationally of the teenage population. Of course many of these are part-time emlpoyed, which further skews the figures. They do indicate a number who have made themselves unavailable for work, but they do need to make clear why they are unavailable. They do not make it clear whether their employed figures are full and part-time, of whether part-timer figures have been adjusted to create an FTE (full-time equivalent) number. The figures also exlude those (necessarily) within the undeclared (black) economy. Without this sort of detail only the grossest reported changes can be considered of interest/ value - others lesser changes may well be statistical quirks the results of differing estimates, survey results or changing definitions. But you all knew that anyway.

The wealthy, through graduated taxation, expect to pay more for the same state service; where it becomes difficult to swallow is where they are expected to pay more for a worse service. By charging to attend in 'popular' times (i.e. those times that working people, who actually often aren't that wealthy, can most easily attend in), but then offering just the same old extended waits you would be doing just that. That's the problem with 'easy' solutions of rationing through price etc. Actually planning and making appointments in ways (as I have suggested above) which reflected actual times available and 'real' typical consultation times would reduce waiting times 'on the day' (although it would also tend to reduce patient slots available each day which would mean you might have to wait longer to attend the surgery at all). My surgery used to have, but seems to have dropped, 'drop-in' slots where patients who wanted to be seen urgently could turn up and might have to wait a long time, but at least knew that in advance, and could bring a book, or two. My grown-up child always 'prefers' being ill at the evening and on weekends when Seldoc seems to provide an excellent service.

Unless you are a trained medical person a symptom with which you are unfamilar may be trivial or life threatening. A ?5 charge for a single mother on benefits is not trivial - should she ignore her children's illnesses (which may well be new to her, if not to someone trained or with more experience) or risk being fined for being a good and conscientious mother. Or do you want to bring in the cost of operating a means-tested system? I am happy to stand corrected, but my guess is that the largest consumers of NHS GP services are children and the elderly (both of whom would be likely on political grounds to be exempted from consultation charges as they are from prescription charges). Means testing would also exempt those on benefits. So the payers would be the employed, who normally find it difficult to take time-off to see doctors and are probably the least likely to be able to afford (time-wise) being the worried well. Hence the ?5 charge would fall most heavily on those who could certainly benefit from reduced waiting times at surgeries, but are least likely to be able to (being often constrained to take over-running end-of-day appointments because otherwise they are at work).

Do the figures also show what the 'base' is for each constituency - the growth rates in each class may appear large, but where the start point is very low (as it must have been for those claiming more than 12 months in Dulwich and Norwood) this is an anomoly. (i.e. If the figure moved from 1 to 2 it would be a 100% increase, but that might have been 2 out of a million - hence not really significant in the grand scheme of things). What percentage of those not in full time education or at state retirement age does the JSA claimant level (for instance) represent for each constituency?

On any one day an unexpected emergency can cause a particular doctor to run very late - a good receptionist lets waiting patients know what is happening - if you are waiting and know someone may be close to death in the surgery you are far more likely to put up with the wait. However when over-runs become a regular feature (as reported, and as experienced I have to say by me as well - not at DMC) then the booking algorithm being used needs revision - there is perfectly good maths to suppport this (look up queueing theory). I would guess that 'average' times vary with time-of-year, and possibly time of day, as well as with particular types of patients. So the elderly (multiple problems), the very young (communications issues, parental concern) may need longer 'casual' appointments than adolescents and working age patients. By allocating time for these as they occur (flagging them by type in a database), taking into account seasonal and time of day variations, a very simple programme could allocate 'sensible' times for patients mitigated by a 'no show' factor probably based, again, by patient type. A very simple booking programme could easily be created which would allow appointments to be booked so that most people would get in to see their doctor within 5-10 minutes of appointment time - and a strict 10 minute rule would then be seen by most as wholly justified and surportable. It just needs good data-capture and conscious thought to be applied - I bet such programmes are available off-the-shelf already.

If it is true that the average time per patient is 12 minutes (I assume that this includes 'write-up' time for notes), then doctors should be aiming to see 5 patients an hour - but I think they book normally in 10 minute slots (based on the times I have been given for appointments) i.e 6 patients an hour - so leaving unbooked catch-up time is effectively admitting that they are otherwise over-booking. Over a 4 hour surgery (without slack time built in) that means that they would be booking-in almost a full extra hour of patients. Over-booking is normal to ensure full utilisation of scarce resources - making run-rate assumptions about no-shows - which we know to be an issue for the NHS. That is also why airlines over-book - and are occasionally caught-out when everyone does turn up for a flight. Airlines want to fly full planes, doctor don't want to be sitting around twiddling their thumbs because there are no patients waiting (and we, as tax payers funding them, wouldn't want that either) And of course GP medical staff need to work to predictable hours - that is often why they have chosen to be GPs rather than work in hospitals - so they can organise their personal lives better.

In the thread which was taken down I had noted that a policy of punishing late arrivals is consistent with, and similar too, the policy that airlines have of over-booking - many GP and Dentist practices rely on no-shows (and lates) to allow them to over-book practitioner time - that way the doctors, and dentists, are working all the time. Of course, on the days when everybody actually turns up it is necessary to be strict about 'punishing' late arrivals so that the work-load is manageable - of course that is also the reason why so many of us have to wait so long after our booked appointment time to see anyone - we are suffering from fewer people than anticipated missing appointments or being punishably late. If, as patients, we become more reliable then the over-booking will have to be cut-back - that I think is what we are not seeing at the moment - practices are still booking in (probably) 5 minute slots when the average time is probably 6-7 minutes - it all mounts up when everyone turns up, and on time. At the end of the day, or at the end of a morning session I suppose, punishing any latecomer, even when only fractionally late and that by a surgery clock out of synch with other time sources will be the only way that the staff can get home at all at a reasonable hour - they can't actually handle the numbers of people they book in for a particular surgery session, nor do they plan to. As a patient it is of course annoying that we are punished for lateness, but we can be required to wait (sometimes) inordinate amounts and often without apology or explanation. I am not a DMC patient by the way, and have no experience of the way they treat their patients - I am picking up from the experiences I have of my own surgery (which operates a 10 minute rule, to my knowledge).

Don't people realise that dog muck is full of germs Curiously, it is not 'germs' which are a cause for concern with dog faeces so much as worms (or the eggs or larvae of worms) which can cause, inter alia, Toxicariasis ( a canaine born threadworm) which can lead to blindness. I doubt whether anyone assumes that faeces, of any origin, are germ free. But many of those that dogs carry we are quite used to, and have defences against. We are less likely to have, or have defences against, parasitic worms.

So have I - thank god never been used at all - I'm not sure I want it to be 'useful', rather, at the end of my life 'what a complete waste of time that was!

The general arguments against means testing benefits are that the administrative process of testing may cost more than the money saved, and that means-tested benefits may not be taken up by those eligible, either through 'pride' or because the forms that need to be filled in are so complex and off-putting that people don't bother (i.e. for things like attendance allowance). Neither, I believe, are true in the case of 'free' school meals; whereas, as James rightly points out, using taxes to subsidise those well able to pay for themselves (when the taxed include those more hard pressed to make ends meet) is madness, particularly were there are so many other more useful things to spend taxes on. Issues about appropriate nutrition for children are not going to be solved by one school meal a day and the true levels of poverty are 'clouded' by the curious mechanistic Labour formula of the poor being those who have 'less than 60%' of average income - as opposed to objective measures such as housing density, lack of amenities etc. etc. By making 'poverty' comparative you will always have the 'poor' with you until you achieve true socialism where everyone has the same (but of course, everyone could have nothing, - but, by the Labour formula, as long as no one had less than 60% of the average, no one would be poor!). Oh, like Russia before the fall of communism then.

Sue You are quite right - the berries are red - they dry off to a deeper brown/ black and it was the remains of last year's berries I had been looking at before I wrote. Apologies - but you'd have to wait to the autumn to tell the difference when the berries ripen, I think they both start off green before final colouration.