Tom Reynolds's Blog, page 6

Please Don't

As I am a complete nerd, I have email alerts set up for various topics spoken about in government. Often I don't have the chance to read them but, being stuck alone on station last night, I had the time and the good luck to read on such discussion.

This was a discussion about encouraging people to 'self care' their minor ailments. There was no mention of ambulances, the discussion centred mostly on the role that Pharmacists, GPs and Practice Nurses have to play. After all the government has...

K.I.S.S (From P.N.I)

(Slept too late - so no time to blog for both Paper Not Included and here - so here is what I've written over there)

Publishers are missing the two important things that they should have for every ebook release.

Ease of access and wide access.

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Ease of Access
Why do I use iTunes to download my music instead of torrent sites? Why do I pay for albums instead of typing "band name + torrent" into Google?

First - because it is wrong and illegal, but secondly and perhaps, for many people, mor...

When Did I Start Being Stupid?

It's not May yet, but I'm starting to feel some energy returning to me from over the winter. It's only a little and it's not being directed towards anything useful, but at least it means that the worst of winter is over.

Why do I say May? Well it's when there is a spike in suicides from all those winter depressives finally having enough energy to do something stupid.

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You may ask yourself why I'm thinking about suicide, well it's because of something rather stupid that I did during a...

Trapped

"I know you like doing that sort of thing", my crewmate said, "but I can do it this time seeing as you are getting old and fat".

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It was 3am in the morning (as it always seems to be) and we were being sent out of our area, although quite close to where I live, to go and see an elderly woman who had called for an ambulance and seemed a bit confused.

Knocking on the front door I could see a hunched shape moving around in the hallway. It came to the door, fiddled around a bit and then...

That Word.

A lack of energy from these winter hours, night shifts and a feeling that no matter how hard I shout about things nothing is going to change has meant that I've been lacking the will to write. I keep thinking 'no-one listens', or at least nobody who has any power to change anything.*

What I should be writing about is the private ambulance companies that are being contracted to do our A&E emergency work, which is an incredibly bad idea. I should be writing about the utter tosh calls I've been g...

Amazon Blinked

So it would look like Amazon has blinked first.

On Amazon's discussion board,

"Dear Customers:

Macmillan, one of the "big six" publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We...

Amazon, Apple, Macmillan and Me.

For those people who are interested in ebooks and the technology market the past few days have been 'interesting' to say the least.

It started when Amazon pulled all the ebooks published by Macmillan from their Kindle store.

Speculation ran rife - it eventually seems to have boiled down to Macmillan wanting to set the price of their ebooks and adopt an 'agency' model while Amazon wants to keep the status quo.

I shall leave it to the wonderful John Scalzi and Charlie Stross to explain.

Do I...

Student

We had a student with us for the past two weeks. It was her first ever time on a real working ambulance so she had a more than a few 'firsts'.

She saw her first dead body.

She drove for the first time with the blue lights and sirens.

She used the radio for the first time, talking to Control.

She spoke to her first patient, calmed her first scared patient.

She met her first alcoholic (who was nice) and her second alcoholic (who wasn't).

She got cut out of her first car, holding the neck of the...

Once Again

She's in her late eighties, she has arthritis, sores covering her body and brain cancer.

Every movement causes her pain.

She's been moved from one hospital to another - all for her own benefit, but she only seems to stay in one place for a few weeks before going to somewhere more suitable.

She's getting good care, people are looking out for her, the place where we pick her up from is a nice unit - she's going back to the local hospital because of a new symptom that is causing her pain.

We...

Closed

Queen's Hospital in Romford is closed

King Georges Hospital, a bit closer to my station is closed.

Whipps Cross hospital remains open for more of the day, but then closes.

Newham, Homerton and the Royal London are now the only hospitals in East London accepting patients.

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Queen's and King Georges being closed in the east means that ambulances local to them are bringing patients to Newham.

Crews local to Newham (i.e. me) are being told to take patients to either the Homerton or...