Have medical prescription will travel

On 1st April NHS Prescription charges in England increased to £6.85 per item. On the same date medical prescription charges in Wales were scraped.

If you live in London and have more than three items on a prescription, it will be cheaper to buy an Advanced Return train ticket and travel to Cardiff to obtain your prescribed medication, than go to your local pharmacy..

Sunday there was a program on BBC Radio 4 “Battle for Birth”, looking at the history of maternity practice in the NHS. Even within the last thirty years expectant mothers, as a matter of routine had to suffer the indignity of being shaved and given an enema. It was NHS policy for all women to give birth in Maternity Hospitals; and they were not allowed out of bed for two weeks after giving birth. How things have changed; today because of financial constraints 9 out of 10 NHS Health Trusts in England and Wales cannot afford to run antenatal classes. A recent survey by the Royal College of Midwives revealed two-thirds of maternity units are understaffed and an additional 3000 midwives need to be recruited.

NHS National Health Service is a misnomer, it should be PCHS Postal Code Health Service.

More press hype?

Was the murdered Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer the primery target or was he used as a warning to others?

It is supposed hoodlums lost a lot of money when Parkistan was beaten unexpectedly by Ireland. Would that be sufficient reason to have the coach murdered? For what benefit - punishment or to prevent him disclosing information?

To fix a match isn’t easy. It takes a number of players, both bowlers and batsmen to participate in throwing a match. Why go to all that trouble? With spread and spot betting, match fixing is unnecessary. It’s much easier to fix small aspects of a game: the number of wides bowled in an over, the number of catches dropped. Easier to arrange, and less likely to be detected.

There is a lot of speculation over what Woolmer knew, and what he was going to disclose in his next book. Without casting dispersions on the dead, he had a history of being touched by the shadow of corruption. Woolmer was the coach of South Africa when the team was captained by the late and disgraced Hansie Cronje (he was banned for life in 2000, for his involvement in match fixing - he died in 2002 in a light aircraft plane crash).

Lets assume he was murdered to prevent him disclosing information in a book he was yet to write. The book wouldn’t be published the next day, or the next week or even the next month. Why murder him in the full glare of the ICC Cricket World Cup? It doesn’t make sense. He could have been disposed of after he returned home to South Africa and the hit made to look like a robbery that had gone wrong.

Lets assume he was murdered as punishment and a warning to others. If that was what was intended, the reverse has been achieved. “Match fixing” and all the other scams have been placed in the forefront of attention of the cricketing authorities, the police and the press. If two wides are bowled in an over, that bowler will immediately be under suspicion. The murder has probably frightened off players from participating in spread betting fixes.

The murder is likely not to be associated with match fixing or spread betting. One thing that can be said with confidence, no England player can be accused of corruption - they are so bad, there’s no need for them to throw a match.

Marriage on the rocks?

It was reported this week that the number of people marrying in England and Wales is the lowest since records began in 1896. There are many theories being put forward for this, including women’s growing sense of independence.

Many couples say “we don’t want to go through all the fuss and expense that marriage involves”.

There would appear to be two images of marriage:

• An act of making a life long commitment to each other.
• A romantic image of “The Big Day”; the most important day in a girls life, large flowing dress, horse and carriage taking her to a picturesque village church, grand reception with the latest fad a chocolate fountain.

Marriage is the former not the latter. There is no need for a grand ceremony costing thousands of pounds. The average cost of a wedding in the UK is £15,000 (US$29,500). With the spiralling cost of housing, making it difficult for first time buyers to get onto the housing ladder, it would make more sense to put the £15,000 towards the deposit for a house.

Fortunately there is no tradition in my family of large weddings - in deed the contrary. My parents had a minimalist wedding - my father met my mother (for the record I wasn’t to appear on the seen for another three years), at the Registry Office and in the presence of two witnesses got married. Afterwards he went home, and she went back to her home - two months later they told their families that they were married and finally moved in together.

It was similar when I got married; it was done in front of two witnesses - followed by no reception or honeymoon. When my daughter got married she wore a white two piece suite that she could wear on other occasions. There were about twenty people present, the reception was held in her in-laws house, and my wife did the catering - a nice simple affair. After lunch we all went out for a walk.

Why bother to go through a marriage ceremony? People say “in five years time, I don’t want to be tied to someone I no longer love, just because we’re married”. I found marriage to be a support not a constraint. In the first year of every marriage, there are strains imposed on the relationship. You are starting to learn to live together, starting to think about what is good for the both of you, not just what is good for you. It’s easy to think “this isn’t working” and walk away. Marriage makes you think twice. You might say, “If you need the prop of marriage you couldn’t have been in love”. All I can say is I’m more in love now than the day I got married.