Chez Moi

 

What is this guy doing? I mean, seriously. Yeah he had a pop at a tennis career. That bombed. Now, in true blue British sense of the word, he is trying to make a career for him as a celebrity? I mean, what gives?

When I saw him with his family on Family Fortunes last month or so, I thought “what?” but then, the oddest celeb has-beens parade on that show so it wasn’t a big. Or so I assumed.

And now, for the past three weeks, he has been gracing my TV screen every Sunday night, on Dancing On Ice. And it is excruciating to watch. This gangly, seven-feet or so of ungainly man comes on the ice every Sunday, as stiff and ill-suited to a spin on the ice as one could possibly be, with an inane grin fixed on his mug and it is enough to make me scream. Why? Why? Why?

Stop making a fool of yourself, please, Rusedski. Stop trying to carve a life as a celebrity on British telly. I cannot imagine a life worse (for me, that is!) than watching you pop in at random moments grinning like a nutter. This may sound really bizarre, but how about a life away from the limelight? Yeah? Move away from the cameras. No Spouse Swap, Celeb Big Brother or I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here nonsense, ok? Just get yourself out of here. Please!

A few months back, Reader’s Digest published a study of the British National Health Service and though the results weren’t shocking, it still sent a jolt to see in black and white what you have suspected all along: if you think the day-time service is pants, then the nighttime is nothing but diabolical. The long waits, lack of facilities and other niggles aside, the fact that one can never get a decent health service, because, ironically, it itself is ailing, is almost laughable. ‘Almost’ because it sure isn’t laughing matter to be told that unless you are bleeding from four places, you are not classified as an emergency is not what you want to hear when you are ill and in desperate need of medical help.

The one time I was in hospital in Britain (touchwood!) was when I had my son six years back. The night nurse was surly, grumpy and wasn’t much of a reassuring sight to a scared first time mum-to-be. Extremely matter-of-fact and brusque, she was the nursing equivalent of “wham! bam! out you get!”. To say I was pleased when the shift changed at 7 AM and with it, brought a smiling, Scottish midwife was an understatement. The following night when I was left with a newborn, I wasn’t the picture of confidence. When I buzzed a midwife to ask if she could hand me my son from his cradle as my bottom was sore with the episiotomy stiches and wasn’t feeling too sure about my ability to transfer him safely to cradle to lap, I got a stinging rebuke for disturbing the other patients and herself, for such a trivial task! If I wanted my baby, well then I better help myself as there were far more important jobs she had to do, like feeding the infant she had in her arms, for a start.

I did after sweating bullets, shocked by the sharp words.

Another time, my husband was ill and on the advice of the emergency nurse on the NHS Direct helpline, he went to the local hospital at 9 PM or thereabouts. He should have taken the nurse’s suggestion of an ambulance but not wanting to create a mega scene, he went with a mate. Had he done that, he would probably seen a doctor that night. Instead, he sat in the waiting room with drunks, assorted moaning and bleeding people for more than four hours by which time, after being coughed on by most of the ill people in the South East of England, he stated he felt much better and came back home.

A former acquaintance had some horror stories to narrate after her delivery. Deciding to stay overnight in the hospital in the hope of some pain relief proved to be a serious error of judgement. When her husband and mother visited her the following morning, they were shocked to find her bed empty and no one having a clue where she had got to. They finally tracked her down in one of the bathrooms - sitting in a rapidly cooling tub of water, where she had been for the past hour or so, following the directions of a harried midwife when she complained of unbearable pain. It took the mother and husband all their energy to get her out - she was big and was a snug fit - and not too early too, as the baby crowned within seconds!

In the past seven years of living here, I have heard many more tales of NHS ineptitude and am in complete agreement with the survey. I know the overworked staff are not to blame - well, not completely anyway. Much help is needed, fast.

Question is, will anything ever be done enough to alter the current state of affairs?

Immigration in Briain: What needs to be done for smoother integration?

As you can see, I am not letting go of this topic! Thing is, I need to sound quite knowledgeable about it and I have just about a week’s time. Which is where you, my lovely blog readers come in. Please log onto my show on BlogTalkRadio and click on the appropriate button to speak to the host - me! All you need to do is tell your own immigration story. Location, your stance - nothing matters. You might be living in North Wales and might be from Eastern Europe and your neighbours couldn’t be nicer - ring and tell me. Or, if you are a Chinese living in Midwestern America and your white brethren are colder than Arctic ice, ring and tell me.

Whatever your immigration story is, I am willing to listen. So please pick up that phone and dial (001) (347) 996-3899
The date: December 10
The time: 2:00 PM GMT Be there!ps: It is free! All you need is log on to the website, just click the link and you will know more!

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Tags: radiochat, immigration, britain

Britain is all caught up with the news of teacher Gillian Gibbons being thrown into jail in Sudan, facing a 15-day jail term followed by deportation. At one point, it was reported that she might be looking at the business end of a whip - 40 times. Her crime? Letting her class of 7 year olds name their class teddy bear ‘Mohammad’. All over the country loud, disbelieving gasps can be heard, accompanied by the typical ‘they must be joking, surely!’ Foreign Office is scrabbling about trying to stop the Sudanese government from lashing out on the poor bewildered woman.

One of the guys in my course even made fun of it the other day. That made me think - they don’t get it, do they?

While it is tragic that the poor lady has been thrown in jail, laughing about it or passing disparaging comments about the attitude of ‘those people’ doesn’t help matters. Much as the British might see it as nothing short of ridiculous to get het up by something so trivial, the matter couldn’t be more serious to the other party. If one looks at it from the Sudanese government’s point of view, the teacher has committed a blasphemy, by naming a teddy bear after the Prophet. So, in their minds, she deserves to be punished. In fact, had it been a Sudanese citizen who had committed this act, retribution would have been swift.

This is not the first time the West has been caught with its foot caught in a religious quagmire. A few year’s back, an enterprising outfit in America called Sitting Pretty released a range of toilet seats named, ‘Sacred Seats’. The collection carried images of Lord Ganesha and Goddess Kali in glorious technicolour. Retailing for a whopping sum of $130, the line was augmented by such compelling prose such as this:

“Ganesha the Hindu elephant god, removes all obstacles, destroys evil and provides you with protection on your journey.”

Say goodbye to constipated bowels! Taking the dump and prayers at one go - what more could a harried Hindu want?

Of course, the Hindu community got into a major uproar and the line was withdrawn. A while later, a San Francisco company released ‘designer footwear’ carrying images of, you guessed it, Ganesha and assorted members of his illustrious family. Outraged squawks from all quarters made sure the shoes weren’t released into the general market. Despite this, flip-flops and Hindu gods were once again merged in 2003 by American Eagle Outfitters and the result was pretty much the same . Then there was this French shoe manufacturer who put pictures of Rama onto shoe fronts.

 

Why would someone do it? While one can arrive at a whole lot of answers, what it all boils down to is that the people behind these never realised (or cared enough to realise) what these images represent and what kind of sentiment they carry for the millions of Hindus around the world. Unfortunately enough, no one seemed to understand the reason behind the furore caused by these incidents so that the circumstances need never be repeated again.

What do all this have to do with this divorced teacher and her impending, frightening future in Sudan? Personally, nothing. She merely went with her students’ wishes, the papers say - after all, why wouldn’t she let them name their toy? That she did not understand the weight the name Mohammad carries and therein lay her misfortune.

The teacher’s inadvertent error just reiterates the fact that it is high time the Western countries start taking into account other cultures, customs and religions. It is that classic rule “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” To this, one more statement could be added: “do not judge everyone or everything by your standards”.

Does the teacher deserve what she gets? No, no, emphatically no. Do the general Western populace need an education on what goes and what doesn’t, with respect to the world’s religions? A definite yes.

Gordon Brown’s government has been blundering about since his first day at the office. The Northern Rock crisis hit them long and hard and they have barely got past that. But with the latest ‘offering’, they have taken incompetence to levels barely scaled before.

They have only gone and lost our child benefit records. All of it. All 25 million of it. Gone. Child benefit records, that contain everything from the names, national insurance numbers, addresses, date of births, bank accounts. Know what the funniest bit about this whole thing is? The Chancellor Alistair Darling stressing “there was no evidence of misuse of the data.”

Really? That’s okay then - I can heave a big sigh of relief and go back to surfing the Web.

What really happened?

Apparently, on October 18, HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs service) sent the child benefits data to the National Audit Office, in two CDs, by unrecorded and unregistered post! The CDs, containing the details of 25 million individuals, failed to turn up at the NAO and when NAO complained, a second set was sent to them.

What a bunch of imbeciles! Who are these idiots who run the government? They send vital information, in CDs, by unregistered post and when that fails to turn up, instead of kicking shit, calmly send another copy over! And now, they expect everyone to be relaxed because they assure us that “there is no evidence the data has gone to criminals”. Well, we won’t know that, will we, until huge sums of cash go missing from our accounts?

The blame game has started already - the Chancelleor blamed junior officials at HMRC for the fiasco; HMRC Chairman Paul Gray has resigned already. The Tories are baying for the Chancellor’s blood, asking him to resign too.

How serious is this?

Very. The general public is really worried as to what is going to happen. The data in the lost discs contain real juicy details and any crook would give an arm and a leg to get his grubby mitts on them. Even though the discs are supposed to be ‘password protected’ and the data is in an ‘encrypted form’, how much time would it take for a determined fraudster to break it?

Banks are trying their best to assure the public that the information contained on the discs are not enough for anyone to access their bank accounts. But there are other ways of perpetrating fraud. Identity theft is a big deal now and for those in the game, this is manna from heaven, Using someone’s name, address and date of birth, a crook can take out credit cards, loans, mobile phones etc, for starters. David Hill, senior security consultant at red24 says to the Times, “having a national insurance number is as good as having a passport.”

Worryingly, our children’s data is in there too - including their dates of birth. What is there to prevent sickos from targetting the children?

While Darling has glibly said people ought to check their bank accounts for “irregular activity”, what protection does Joe Public have against the identity theft? From identity theft, organized crime is just a step away. Immigration, driving licences, id cards, NI numbers - anything and everything could come under attack.

So what can one do?

There are organizations like CIFAS that can help one fight identity fraud. CIFAS is the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service and will be able to advise on protection of identity and what to do in case of identity theft. Email them at protective.registrationuk@equifax.com. You can also register with a credit reference agency like MyCallCredit, who will, for a fee, monitor your credit and would alert you periodically. Any changes or irregular activity, you would be contacted immediately by the agency and you can react proactively.

The UK Payments Association has released a leaflet for those concerned about the HMRC data theft. The leaflet, according to the APACS website, contains “questions and answers, as well as top tips on spotting and stopping ID theft”.

A special hotline has also been set up and the number for that is 0845 302 1444.