Monthly Archives: October 2007

Current Affairs, Politics

Can’t Get an NHS Dentist Either?

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The news this morning told us pretty well what we already knew, the new NHS contracts haven’t helped with supplying NHS dentists.

For a year or so we had an NHS dentist that we were seeing in Wokingham. They had newly set up a few years back having apparently emigrated from South Africa Then a few weeks after the new contracts came in, Beth got a letter inviting from the practice saying that although they still supported the NHS, they unfortunately had decided that they were no longer able to offer sound preventative dentistry under the NHS and instead offered Beth a chance to sign up for the dental insurance policy offered by the practice – stating that all subsequent NHS appointments would be cancelled. Note in particular that I wasn’t mentioned anywhere, nor was I invited to join their scheme. My feelings were very much that they’d used the NHS to build up a client base, and then on that basis were trying to get a good customer base for a sustainable business. My feelings were further backed up by the fact that I – who hadn’t needed any dental work – wasn’t invited but Beth who had needed several things done was.

Anyway, we didn’t reply to the offer and thought nothing more about it until the practice phoned me up to confirm I was coming to my appointment that was booked for after the changeover. It was a pretty short conversation it has to be said. Furthermore having come across people like our friend Phil who found that private Dentists are not exactly accountable trying to stay in the NHS seemed like a good idea.

Our current situation is that we are not properly registered with a dentist anywhere, however Beth has had treatment under the NHS from the one remaining NHS dentist in town, and she got that by going through the PCT as mentioned in the BBC article today. That actually seemed to work fairly well. As to our former NHS dentist, if the selection of cars the dentists are now driving is anything to go by, are doing very well.

Current Affairs, Politics

Another Year – Another Leader

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A few years back you couldn’t turn on the news without some sort of leadership crisis in the Conservative party – now it seems that the Liberal Democrats have picked up the same disease. I commented last year about the group of relative unknowns who ousted Charles Kennedy. Menzies Campbell won the subsequent leadership election – which ever since I’ve found slightly strange as of the members of the party I know, nobody seems to have voted for him – in fact the majority of them seem to think it was a generally poor move to elect him at all. Indeed most of them seemed to think the party had made a dreadful mistake to oust Charles Kennedy in the first place.

That opinion seems to have been reflected in the opinion of the general public, as the poll figures for the party have slid steadily down ever since, leading ultimately to his resignation as leader today.

But then comes the question of who could replace him, looking at the runners and riders the only two recognisable figures to me are Simon Hughes who having been beaten twice before has ruled himself out already, and Charles Kennedy the former leader. To be honest I wouldn’t be surprised if the party re-elected Charles Kennedy, despite the periodic hiccups such as the recent smoking incident on the train to Plymouth.

Of course the question to consider is whether they should go for someone who is already known or make a clean break. The Conservative party seem to have built their resurgence on the back of a photogenic new leader, and without much in the way of tangible policies either, much as Labour did a decade or so before with Blair. Effectively both grew in a large part out of effectively criticising the sitting government rather than anything particularly radical. Maybe some new relatively unknown leader is what the Liberal Democrats need? Certainly what they don’t need is many more years of leadership instability…

Movies & TV

When Will Craig Learn?

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We’ve just watched the Strictly Come Dancing results show. This series the judges have got the final say in order to enable them to boot off people they don’t think can dance that the audience keep saving. However tonight you could see the obvious frustration as the weakest dancer was lifted out of the danger zone once again by a sympathy vote from the viewing public. Time after time the judges get frustrated by this, but time after time they mark in such a way that the audience wouldn’t do anything else. This time it was Craig who marked Kate Garraway – who was on crutches three days ago – so low that even some of the other judges commented on it being a cruel mark. The more he does that, the more the public vote to save the targets of his cruelty!

Computers/Technology, Web/Internet

N770 – Nice Tablet – Lousy Quality

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Faulty Nokia N770

A month or two ago I was raving about the Nokia N770. Unfortunately tonight I am somewhat less enamoured having been greeted with the pictured screen.

It didn’t come up with this first mind you. Initially it booted normally – but then it announced that the battery needed charging before shutting off, and this is what it produced on reboot after an apparently white screen. Based on the sounds it was booting properly, and certainly if I tap the screen where icons should be it sounds like they are working. Looking at the screen at a very low angle I can just about make out the screen, so it seems something weird has happened to the screen.

As always with technical problems, the first port of call was an internet search where I turned up a good deal of other people with the same problem – indeed it seems I got off lightly with the usage I’ve had – other peoples units did this within days! The problem or “White Screen of Deathâ€? as the problem has been christened seems pretty common. The cause is described as ‘un-clean’ power cycles by some users, so they recommend minimising the number of times you power the unit on and off. Certainly it seems like my booting up with no battery may have caused the problem.

Considering the numbers of still working Nokia phones I have sitting around it is decidedly disappointing that the company doesn’t seem to be able to produce an internet tablet that can last more than a couple of months without the screen packing up. It’s also going to be an interesting series of exchanges as Expansys were shipping out US N770’s over the summer – mine included, so although all the machines are manufactured in Estonia, Nokia may well try to avoid replacing the unit. Expansys policy seems to be to pass any faults onto the manufacturer after 21 days…

Church, Music

The MacGregors

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The MacGregors

So after all the organising and planning it’s all done – the MacGregors played a concert for us in the Parish Centre tonight, and tomorrow they head off for their last date in the UK where they will be playing as part of the next Vertigo event.

Age wise we had pretty well the usual St James’ eight-to-eighty – well actually six to beyond eighty as Becky’s youngest daughter came along too. We even had two new people who had seen the poster walking past the Church at the weekend and decided to come along. Food wise we had a great bring-and-share supper with plenty of food for everybody – as usual a slightly eclectic selection but I think everybody was well fed.

Since both the MacGregor girls had managed to pick up one of the current colds that are doing the rounds they played two sets, one after main course, and the other once we had got on to coffee taking a break in between. Experience wise the concert was a bit different from what you would have heard if you’d listened to their album as this was very much an acoustic set with only the two of them, and without the backing of the full band – however at the core all of the arrangements on the CD are still based around the harmonies of the two girls voices which of course you still got in the live performance.

What we also got to hear were a load of new songs that have been written since the album was released, plus something you don’t hear on the album – a flashback to what they first played together Toss the Feathers a traditional Irish folk tune and one of my favourites of the Corrs recordings. What was interesting was that when I said that I’d first heard it on the first Corrs album the girls said that they had heard it on the same album and had transcribed the song by ear from the recording to do their own version. Check out the Corrs version here if you want to compare – I thought it was pretty impressive.

All in all it was a great evening, and everybody seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves. Hopefully if they’re ever passing this way again we’ll be able to get them along to play for a bigger audience as I know there are quite a few people who wanted to come but were unable to due to clashing commitments. Having said that, those that missed out still get a chance as they donated five copies of their CD to the Church so we can sell those on or maybe raffle them at our next musical event.

I took a few pictures during the concert which as always are in our photo gallery. I also used the video recording on the camera (and remembered the tripod too) so below is all the sequences edited together – Toss the Feathers is on the end.

Incidentally on a technical note, the above is my first attempt at using the rather controversial new version of iMovie – after some teething troubles (I had to reinstall the application from the DVD before it would start properly) it was relatively straightforward. The interface is totally redesigned but was pretty good once I’d got used to it – the clip skimming being particularly cool. The other cool thing is the pretty straightforward YouTube export – the above clip was sent straight from the application in much the same way as I can now send pictures from iPhoto to Flickr.