vailian

At the Christopher Street Day parade I met up with the well-spoken Heather and her boyfriend who are off to Bergen today... it is always intriguing to meet interesting bloggers in the flesh, and we had a nice chat before I had to leave. Quite a colorful crowd in Cologne, they are estimating a half a million people. Then went to help a friend repair her bed, this is her cat:





Then this morning a rather disturbing phone call from my ex, who has worked for several years for the National Health System in London as a secretary; she types up the patient reports and the research papers for the doctors in 2 hospitals in central London... she reports that to save money, the typing is sent to India. That is, the audio dictations from the doctors are mailed to India, typed up there, and sent back to London for checking. This seems to me to be quite dangerous, because there is no longer any direct contact between the doctors and the secretaries. The number of doctors is being cut, the trainee positions have been eliminated, research grants have been curtailed. And why? Because the service is being privatised and outsourced, the only new jobs being created are for more levels of burocracy.

It is appalling, and quite depressing to see the decline of what was one of the best public health systems in the world.

I can only hope the same thing doesn't happen in Germany.