The newspaper today is full of the major story – the plight of the Junior Doctors sold down the river by their own British Medical Association and the Senior Consultants who are in bed with the Whitehall W******s who have implimented the latest waste of taxpayers money. The Government has launched yet another “modernisation” on the Health Service. And you would be wrong if you thought it was about delivering a better medical service to patients and a reduction in the wasteful use of funds and acutely short space for waiting rooms and treatment rooms by sacking the infestation of bureacrats. No, this scheme is forcing all our junior doctors to apply for the jobs and specialities they have been studying for or already hold. One can only ask why the BMA even considered for one second supporting this scheme – or why some Consultants seem to have done very well out of supporting it according to the Doctors caught up in the farce that is rapidly developing as yet another expensive and totally unnecessary change for changes sake scheme is imposed on professionals by the faceless and utterly incompetent Wonders of Whitehall.

The Junior Doctors caught up in this disaster are forced to complete an online application form – most of the questions having no direct relationship with anything medical – and then wait to hear if the bureaucrat at the other end has managed to read it; process it; and allocate the doctor to his or her own job. Whitehall doesn’t seem to have considered that (a) most Junior Doctors have families and working partners, and (b) may have invested a considerable number of hours or years even in training for their present speciality. So, the faceless wonder processing the form decides the Doctor X is not required for their current post or speciality and either (a) informs them they are no longer required and are on notice, or (b) can continue in the health service but at a new hospital in some other part of the country. The lucky few who get to keep their jobs are also sometimes told they will have to change speciality.

It is nothing short of disgraceful that someone who has invested five years at university and another five years working as a House Doctor in one of our now increasingly disgracefully maintained and managed hospitals is now at the mercy from a career perspective of some jumped up filing clerk who has no university degree, no medical qualification and is simply processing a form designed by some equally unqualified and overpaid consultant. Morale among Doctors has collapsed completely. Understandably they feel betrayed by the BMA and equally understandably they feel bitter and betrayed by the Consultant Physicians and Surgeons who have managed to not only remain in post but have aided the incompetent civil servants in setting this up.

In the 19th Century the Civil Service was created to do away with the rotten “patronage” system. It has not succeeded. In fact it has simply replaced one rotten system with a new one – one that is even more rotten in that it pretends to be based on fairness and openess when it is neither. Pity the Junior Doctors, but I have to say they are simply the latest casualties in the New Labour (Old Socialist) programme of replacing every professional in management of every public service with incompetent civil servants who will do as they are told.

As for the BMA and the senior Medics supporting this process – well, meet the modern face of Judas Iscariot

Usually the trickiest part of writing a good news story is its opening sentence, which should contain as much information as possible while engaging the reader’s attention:

The most important structural element of a story is the lede—namely contained in the story’s first sentence. Lede (pronounced /lid/) is a traditional spelling, from the archaic English¹, used to avoid confusion with the printing press type formerly made from lead, or the typographical term “leading”.[2] The lede is usually the first sentence, or in some cases the first two sentences, and is ideally 20-25 words in length. This makes writing a lede an optimization problem, in which the goal is to articulate the most encompassing and interesting statement that a writer can make in one sentence, given the material with which he or she has to work.

Then again, sometimes the story just drops in your lap:

A jazz musician was injured Friday after jumping from a burning motor home driven by a one-time roller skating stripper from Lodi.

the blog québécois

Obviously where there is a wedding there is a honeymoon and where there is a honeymoon there is a need to buy the right clothes. This groom is heading off to Mexico on his honeymoon to try and veg on the beach. So stuff like reef sandals online is quite an interesting site to behold. Living generally in temperate climes means that there is not really a big need for sandals but the lovely beaches of the resort we are off to in Mexico scream for sandals.

Beowulf

While reading Gareth Hinds’ adaptation of Beowulf you are overwhelmed by the powerful art therein and drawn into the legend that is the mighty warrior. It is a stunning rendition of the age-old epic saga that clearly demonstrates the Viking ethos and beliefs.

As a fan of the tale since reading it as a young child, I can highly recommend this graphic novel version. Every home should have one for when your child hits the comic book stage. Cthulhu fans will be interested in Hinds’ manifestation of one of the monsters that Beowulf battles.

Words do not do full justice to this thing of beauty. Hinds’ illustrations bring the story to life in a way that you have never seen before. His entire way of doing illustration evokes a feeling of the cold wastes of the Viking lands, the bleakness of the wintry fyord and the toughness of Norse men.

I am not one to really like graphic novels, as I am not really into visual representations of stories, preferring the written word. However, this book is so impressive that it overcame my indifference to the genre.

Clearly Hinds is a talented graphic cartoonist who will no doubt move on to more impressive works. It takes an amazing level of talent for an artist to be able to take such a well-known tale and make it his own.

What better way to introduce someone to this classic of Northern European literature than this spectacular book? And unlike many books of any kind it’s one you will find yourself reading again and again examining the drawings in minute detail for the subtleties that lie therein.

This is the most impressive graphic novel I have ever seen… bar none. Yes it is that good.

You might have thought ink was not at all funny or ripe for comedy. You would be wrong as there is a great new podcast called InkIsIt.com which is related to the launch of a new printer from Kodak. Rather than doing something lame with adverts and banners they have gone for the comedy approach. The site has the podcast, games and other fun stuff to get you interested.