The Health Service

Labour’s election victory in 1945 paved the way for radical social reform and it was Aneurin Bevan, as Minister of Health, who steered the path to provide everyone, regardless of income, access to free, good quality health services.

It’s become such an intrinsic belief in our society that we have the right to free medical services that it’s difficult to conceive of it as the partisan revolution it must have been at the time – ‘pure socialism’ as Bevan called it. Of course there were detractors and opponents to such a ground-breaking proposal and not only from the political opposition but also from within the Labour party. Interestingly, the medical profession were one of the greatest challengers to the idea.

Bevan’s principle was based on the idea that a society couldn’t consider itself ‘civilised’ if it denied sick people medical attention because they were unable to pay for it. Personally, I think he had a point. He proposed that a free medical service was paid for through government income from taxes – hence more is paid for by those who earn more - and that there were no costs to any patient at the point of delivery. He was so adamant of this ideal that when the Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Gaitskill brought in prescription charges of one shilling in 1952, just four years after the NHS’ birth, Bevan resigned from his position as health minister. His iconic status as ‘father of the National Health Service’ stands nonetheless.

Poor Nye Bevan though, if he felt the need to resign at such news, he must surely be rolling around in his grave to see what’s become of the National Health Service in the sixty years since its inception. Not only at the news that prescription charges in the UK since April of this year are £7.10.

The NHS is in crisis. It’s understaffed, underfunded and staff morale has plummeted onto the filthy, unwashed floors of the wards.

Nursing is no longer considered a noble job. We have to appeal for nurses from overseas to fill the vacant jobs. The job itself is so undervalued and underpaid that nurses can’t buy their own homes.

Some of those in the know suggest that there are too many administrators and managers and nobody who is properly in charge: bring back the Matron, I’m told. The powers-that-be put the cleaning contract out to tender, go for the cheapest option, and wonder why nobody gives a toss about a proper job being done. The ‘superbugs’ are spreading. People are being discharged from hospital with illnesses they contracted in hospital. In 2006 it was estimated that superbugs cost the NHS £1 billion.

Despite the possibility of contracting something nasty, like MRSA or C Difficile it’s almost impossible to believe that the patients that make it into hospital are the lucky ones. But they are. The ‘postcode lottery’ as it’s been dubbed by the media, means that which health authority you live in can make the difference in good or bad chances of treatment and recovery. It can even mean the difference between what procedures are carried out. (In some health authorities couples can obtain a maximum of two IVF attempts; in other areas couples will receive none.) We are led to believe that the NHS is a glorious institution but there is definitely disparity in the service.

It’s easy with 20/20 hindsight to acknowledge that in those days it was an ideal that preventative health care would rule out disease. But advances in medical research - both identifying disease and developing treatments – and technology have increased exponentially since the birth of the NHS. I suspect our expectations of what we’re ‘entitled to’ have risen at roughly the same rate.

It does make me wonder what it will take to sort it out – if it can be sorted out. I suspect it will be radical though, just as it was when Aneurin Bevan first introduced the idea.

Toys Aren't Us

Whenever I catch sight of the store name Toys ‘R’ Us, my blood pressure rises exponentially.

In the title, the R is placed backwards. I get the joke: that it could be how a child learning to write might incorrectly record it but it annoys me because it’s wrong. It’s not cute for a multi-national company to write its R backwards. I’m also irritated because I suppose they mean ‘Toys Are Us’ which isn’t grammatically correct. They mean ‘We Are Toys’ but that isn’t gimmicky enough. All of this is especially frustrating because the majority of its customers have children in tow.

A friend of mine in the UK told me that her daughter’s English report was not very good last term. When she’d finally got time to look in detail at the report it was the school holidays so she couldn’t speak to a member of school staff. She told me that she went to her daughter’s room and managed to find a couple of English homework books and that she was shocked by what she found. The content was good in that her daughter was not inhibited about expressing her thoughts and ideas on paper but the spelling was awful. Simple but silly mistakes like a small ‘i’ for the personal pronoun; confusion between were and where; your and you’re; lack of capital letters for obvious proper nouns. What was particularly shocking was that none of the mistakes in the workbook had been corrected by the teacher. Do the schools not realize that pupils will not miraculously learn to write in formal English unless they are taught the difference?

It’s not really surprising though, when looking through a few magazines at random, I found grammatical errors of the ‘them’ for ‘those’, ‘can’ for ‘may’ and ‘of’ for ‘have’ level. As for the vocabulary, at its best it’s slang and at its worst it’s positively indecent. Why do so many people - and the influential organizations to which they belong – insist on dumbing down the English Language?

Ken Smith, Criminology lecturer at Bucks New University, states in an article in the Times Higher Education Supplement that he’s fed up with correcting students’ spelling mistakes, and recommends the most common errors people make should be accepted as variant spellings. (Variant spellings usually apply to distinctions between US vs UK or US vs Commonwealth spellings, such as donut/doughnut or color/colour.) Ken Smith’s employer is the same University that has a website to attract 11-16 year olds into higher education called: becozucan.org.uk.

Of course gimmicks and errors aside, language isn’t static. You don’t need much knowledge of Thai to notice that language is a developing concept: ‘computer’ and ‘email’ appear regularly in the speech of modern Thais. In 1747 Dr Johnson, wrote of his intent to write a dictionary ‘by which pronunciation of our language may be fixed’ and ‘its purity preserved.’ On completion some ten years later, he acknowledged a dictionary does not stop the development of language.

The Oxford English Dictionary, however, does record its change with the acceptance of new words. OED’s Reading Programme employs in the region of fifty readers to look at all kinds of contemporary publications: novels, scripts, lyrics, newspapers and magazines. The findings of the Reading Programme, Incomings, are stored in an electronic database of quotation material. OED looks beyond the Incomings database and states: ‘A rule of thumb is that any word can be included [in the dictionary] which appears five times, in five different printed sources, over a period of five years.”

So this is my advice: just because you’re a mzee, don’t be a twonk. Get your ample bahookie off the chair and go and start using our rich and evocative language: you’ll soon find yourself crunk about the lingo.

Health and Safety

The UK is going mad.

While staying with friends in the UK last year I saw an article about a local authority preventing firemen from putting up Christmas decorations. The reason cited was ‘working at height’ regulations: firemen? Up ladders? No, we couldn’t possibly have that. Did you know that a parent can’t volunteer to go on a school trip to support staff, unless they’ve been CRB checked (Criminal Records Bureau)? Schools banning parents from videoing their offspring in the nativity play, has now reached epidemic proportions … and kids can no longer play conkers in the playground because it’s dangerous ... unless they’re wearing protective goggles, possibly. Safety consciousness has gone barmy.

Life is dangerous. You could perhaps cocoon yourself in your home and abstain from the dangers inherent in the outside world, but do you not know how many accidents occur in the home? Anyway, forgive me for being obtuse, but I don’t think that’s living. If you do choose living over simply existing, the second you step outside your front door, you do have to take responsibility for what happens there. It’s always seemed insane to me that if someone trips up on a pavement, they can hold someone else accountable. How do you know if it’s your local council’s fault for dodgy pavements or the shoe manufacturer’s fault for the sole of your shoe or, heaven forbid, your own, for not picking your feet up adequately? Whatever happened to personal responsibility? We could blame the Americans for the litigious society in which we live - we know it started on their side of the pond - but actually, isn’t that just looking somewhere else to point the finger?

Anyone who remembers their school girl history lessons, in which employees were regularly maimed and killed by dangerous factory conditions, will realise the necessity of health and safety laws. People working on a machine without safety guards, for unreasonably long shifts should not have to take personal responsibility for their fingers or indeed their lives. This is where health and safety began; with legislation to make it the factory owners’ responsibility for ensuring secure practices, protective clothing and safe machinery for their workers. If there is protective clothing available and the employee chooses not to wear it, should the factory owner be held responsible for an accident? I don’t believe so. There should be balance but that’s what’s all got so out of hand.

Issues are not black and white. Take the firemen story above; suggesting that the firemen shouldn’t put up Christmas decorations because they would be ‘working at height’ is utterly ridiculous given what firemen do for a living. At some point, someone somewhere is going to suggest we don’t have firemen because the risks associated with their job are just too severe for the Health and Safety regulations.

The impact of these rules on society and the community is enormous. My friends told me about a village near them that had a thriving adult theatre group that decided to start a children’s theatre section. The children’s group was wonderfully successful and everybody agreed that the group was a valuable contribution to the children’s lives and the wider community. However, the mountains of rules and regulations that were immediately imposed on them – along with the CRB checks – very nearly precipitated the end of the group.

Before too long there will be no swimming in schools, no visits outside the school grounds, playing will be banned in the playground and beyond school there will be no life in the community. Health and Safety was, and is, an essential part of any developing country but at the rate this is going the UK will be developed into total insanity.

A Drop of the Hard Stuff

In early May London’s new mayor, Boris Johnson unveiled plans to ban the drinking of alcohol on some of London’s transport: the Tube, tram, bus, and Docklands Light Railway. The over ground transport’s alcohol ban will take longer to enforce. The first step would become effective on the first of June. The ban on drinking on transport is part of a wider initiative to curb the sort yobbish behaviour for which Britain is synonymous, increasing the enjoyment of public places for everyone. Its intention is to reduce the anti-social behaviour which cultivates minor crimes in order that action can be taken on more serious criminal activity.

In the run up to the ban, a party, dubbed ‘Last Round on the Underground’ or ‘Last Orders,’ was advertised widely on social networking internet sites. With the ban due to take place at midnight, a party was held - mostly on the Circle Line. It’s great isn’t it? Exactly the sort of idiosyncratic thing we Brits do: like village fetes and street parties.

So what happened next?

What may have started as a bit of fun on the night of the 30th April got out of hand. According to the BBC ‘six London underground stations were closed as trouble flared … four tube drivers, three other staff members, and two police officers were assaulted, and there were 17 arrests. Several trains were damaged and withdrawn from service.’ Eyewitness accounts include reports of ‘fighting, vomiting, ripping up maps and adverts, spilling alcohol and leaving debris.’

I can almost hear the Mayor’s office from here, issuing a collective sigh of ‘Well, Doh.’

Doesn’t it make you proud to be a Brit? What is it with us? We already have a reputation as lager louts throughout European holiday destinations; our football supporters have established themselves firmly on the hooligan yobbo bench and now a proportion of London’s population have become involved.

On the same day as the ‘Last Orders’ party was reported, not coincidentally, was another article on the BBC website, asking: ‘What can be done to tackle underage drinking?’ The problem is that it isn’t just underage drinkers that are the problem. An obsession with alcohol is pervasive throughout our society. Trying to tackle all age drinkers might be a good thing.

We can’t feel smug - it isn’t a phenomena restricted to the UK British. How many times have I heard people here loudly and proudly declaiming their alcoholic consumption; bragging about the quantities of wine they consumed at an event as though it’s some kind of trophy?

Take a look through any of the expat websites and it’s clear that the stresses of expat lifestyle make us more vulnerable to developing problems with alcohol and/or drugs. Denial plays a considerable part in alcoholism and of course it’s still shameful to admit to having such a disease. There isn’t the space here to discuss alcoholism, though of course there are those among us too. I’m talking about those who aren’t alcoholics but who nonetheless abuse alcohol. And don’t try claiming because you don’t drink regularly you don’t have a problem: binge drinking is considered to be worse for people than regular heavy drinking.

Drug and alcohol abuse is of paramount importance to schools throughout Britain and many of the international schools in Bangkok. But it’s simply doesn’t matter what you say to your children – it’s what you do that counts. If they see that every expat event requires a drop of the hard stuff, won’t they think that’s the way to have fun? Can fun not be had without it? If we can’t enjoy a social without alcohol how are we ever going to encourage our children not to abuse it themselves?

Heard the one about...?

Have you heard the joke about the estate agent parking his Porsche outside his office or what about the traffic warden who made his girlfriend pregnant?

Plenty of professions become the butt of jokes and mostly it’s clear where such reputations come from. Sometimes it’s because the job itself is unpopular– like traffic wardens (surely no-one actually aspires to issue parking tickets?) – and other times it’s the way that profession behaves. Estate agents for example are considered charlatans by many, I suspect because they’re motivated by hard cash, which is never the best stimulus, I feel). Law is another career that people definitely aspire to join and I’d like to bet people’s reasons for wanting to become lawyers are often altruistic. In reality however, they’ve gained a shocking reputation for earning their livings out of promoting human dissension.

Something that has often struck me though is how those in the advertising industry have got off scot free from the teasing, leg pulling and the jibes. I’m not referring to small companies selling their own goods, who advertise to get us to notice them over their competitor: that seems like fair game to me. I’m talking about conglomerates - particularly agencies - with gargantuan budgets; the high end.

Not only do these big budgets strike me as somewhat distasteful, there’s something dishonest in the fact that the agencies don’t actually appear to be selling the items they promote. Instead they are selling something much more tenuous. Take a look at the adverts in any glossy magazine. Examine the expressions on the models’ faces: haughty, arrogant, conceited and proud are invariably the look. These people have something you ordinary mortals do not, suggest the advertisers. Their main purpose is to make us feel we too can be transformed into these enviable people if only we bought the products they promote.

And of course it won’t. You buy the pillar box red lipstick and you don’t get anything except the over bright lipstick that you’ll put in a drawer until it goes off. It won’t change anything about your life and yet that is exactly what we’re led to believe. Their aim is for us to feel inadequate.

Despite the fact that advertisers are all competing with one another, they compound each others’ messages. It isn’t the fact that skinny models are used in one campaign that makes adolescent girls at risk from eating disorders: it’s because ALL the big names are using skeletal models. The advertising companies might be trying to say use our product over that one, but essentially they are all suggesting that we can transform ourselves or our lives by buying into their messages. Because their messages are about lifestyles and glamour, rather than products, we’ll never be those people on the billboards; the advertisers will just move the goalposts so we can never attain the ‘look’. If we did achieve it, they wouldn’t be able to sell any more. It’s all based on undermining us.

It’s impossible not to notice in Thailand the enormous number of advertising billboards showing pictures of either Westerners or of luk kreung – mixed blood Thais. It’s utterly ludicrous on every level that beauty is judged by the colour of skin. It’s most stupid because in the West the opposite is true.

The last time I was in the UK I noticed a new development of luxury apartments being built. Outside the site they were advertising the apartments with a picture of a very beautiful half Asian woman and the back of a man of indeterminate ethnicity. Both were expensively dressed and she was looking directly at the camera with a haughty and unobtainable air. They weren’t selling the apartments by showing us what they were like inside, or listing the lovely high end contents they would fit. They were trying to sell the concept of a lifestyle, of glamour and wealth.

In Bangkok, Western-looking Asians are selling condos while in the UK, Asian-looking Westerners are doing the selling.

Can anyone else see that we’re being had?

Blah Blah Blog

When the British Women’s Group asked me to make available my writings on their website the simplest way to do it was to use a blog. I wasn’t interested in the blogging trend but it was an easy way to grant access to my articles. I am now more rabidly than ever not interested in the phenomenon but it did give me another subject for one of these articles.

I don’t want to bore you with detail of the history of blogging, but in brief, the term is said to have come in 1997 from the merging of “website” and “logging”. In 1999 the term was shortened to “blog” and in 2004 it officially entered the language as both a noun and a verb.

That aside, a blog is an easy way for the more dim-witted among society to load information onto a special kind of website. Companies use them to publish up to date - often daily- information about themselves although this ‘copy’ might be prepared by the PR department, rather than the CEO whose name appears at the top of the blog.

The general public use them as diaries or journals… Diaries are great. I don’t doubt their uses: for personal posterity, for therapy, as a means to remember a particularly eventful passage in one’s life, but mostly I believe they should remain private.

Blogging has enabled the general public to reveal their innermost secrets to the world and so the dumbing down, already rife in our society, continues its downward spiral.

I did my homework before I decided where to put my own articles, hunting around the different blogging companies to see what they offered. I nearly abandoned my intention to post my own articles because of what I found.

There is a genuine use for people who live apart from the majority of family and friends. Their posts are a cyber letter about their lives for their families but I have to ask, why are they open for public consumption? Why are comments activated so that complete strangers can make contact? Your baby growing its first tooth is probably something only parents, aunties and grandparents should be cooing over. Believe me, we’re not interested.

It’s not just babies and their bowel movements either. Some people are blogging about their pets (yes, and their bodily fluids too) their knitting projects, their vegetable gardens, alcohol intake, their weight loss. I could go on.

The self indulgence and self worshipping of some people is astonishing. Do they honestly think we might be interested in the trivial details of their lives? Is it about authenticity? Do they feel the need for validation? Do they feel more real, more important, more something else because they put their opinions out in the public domain?

Even more worrying is that these banal blogs have readers… How sad and lonely we’ve become sitting in front of our PCs. Why aren’t the bloggers and the readers going out and talking to their friends and neighbours? We’re losing social skills, losing the ability to communicate. Some of the blogs I came across think in terms of relationships, friendships with the people at the other end of their PCs. It’s tragic. Relationships are so much more complex than written words on a screen.

It’s not just that it’s dull; so much of what is written is illiterate and riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. It’s like virtual landfill. At some point an environmental movement will arise asking what the politicians are going to do with all the dross in cyberspace. It’s not decomposing; it’s getting bigger and bigger, each and every second by the Petabyte.

Andy Warhol was correct in his prediction of Joe Public getting their fame for fifteen minutes. Sadly, the fifteen minutes seems to be going on and on interminably.

Guide to living in Bangkok – Part 2

Last month, The Bitch’s guide gave our newbie friends some valuable advice on arriving in Bangkok and finding somewhere to live. This month I offer my own brand of useful tidbits on filling your days in the land of smiles.

Finding Staff


a) You have got to have staff. Don’t worry that you have just spent the last 20 years of your life cooking, cleaning, driving and shopping for yourself. That is not the expat way. You must have staff. Maid, with/without childcare (delete as applicable), and Driver are mandatory accessories it this service heaven.


b) They work 7 days a week and can be paid as little as a lunch in you local Harvester.


Where to go in Bangkok


c) One Word – Nancy Chandler (well that’s two words actually). Buy it; buy a spare one, use it, don’t go anywhere not on it.


How to get around


d) What do you care? Use your driver.


e) Much has been said about the state of the pavements in Bangkok, and clearly jaywalking is a safer option. The pavements are not actually used by the Thais at all, and are put there to remind the westerners of home and to provide a fun alternative to the Krypton Factor assault course.


Find your local Villa


f) You need to buy the imported food as clearly local produce is either too cheap or too spicy.


g) Central Food Halls are a viable alternative, because they too contain no Thai food and are reassuringly expensive.


h) Or if you want to be brave and “go local”, ask your maid to shop for you.


Wais and Smiles


i) Thailand is known as the land of smiles, thanks to a rather perceptive past tourism minister, and along with the custom of Wai-ing, endear the Thai people to us foreigners (Farangs) as a gentle and good natured culture.


j) However the complexities of Wai-ing are rather difficult to master and my advice is to not attempt them until you are more comfortable with the fundamentals of Thai living. Indeed returning a Wai to each member of staff in you local hotel/restaurant is neither necessary nor good for your back.


k) Also the Thai smile is equally complex, conveying a variety of emotions and expressions. Here in Thailand it has been refined to a level almost akin to it’s own language. So the next time, god forbid, you find yourself walking along a pavement in downtown Bangkok, and a nice Thai lady across the street smiles at you, rather than smile (or even Wai) back, beware, the smile may actually mean “Oi you, yes, you with the strangely colourful hand-drawn map, watch out for that manhole cover it’s….too late.”


Learning to Speak Thai


l) As an expat, busily working your way across the Nancy Chandler map, you are unlikely to have the time, or the inclination to learn Thai. You can successfully communicate in English with your maid, driver, hairdresser, mani/pedicurist, dressmaker and staff at you local Italian restaurant. So where is the incentive? However should you get stuck, say having to use a taxi because the driver is ferrying the kids to Hotel Bumrungrad for another claim, then here are a few useful phrases to get you safely home.


i. Leo Sai – turn left
ii. Leo Kwar – turn right
iii. Sa-top – Stop


Finding somewhere to eat and drink


m) One Word – Nancy Chandler.


n) And for late night cocktails, follow the Trumpton fire brigade roll call: Huu! Q! Bed Supperclub! Met Bar, My Bar, Zuk.


o) More handy Thai phrases to help with drinks ordering
i. Sa-cuse – excuse me
ii. Kor – I would like / I want
iii. Bier – Beer
iv. Coke Lite – Diet Coke
v. Sa-prite – Sprite

So, you can see by following these few simple guidelines, your integration into the true Thai society in Bangkok will be smooth and easy.

Chock Dii Ka