Read All About The Bleedin’ Obvious

In other news – water found to be wet and forgetting to breathe may cause an acute inability to stay alive. Excuse me while I bang my head repeatedly against a lamp post.

Daily Express
May 17 2013

tinnitus you scream / very loudly in my ear / heard you the first time

The future is stuff shaped

Most of my life I’ve attracted ‘creative clutter’. Some times have been worse than others. It’s clearly a  state of mind. Lately my mind has taken me into a different place and I am surprisingly organising our stuff in a more aesthetically pleasing way. It’s a strange feeling at the moment.Like there’s an unseen stranger in the home (have I inadvertently become possessed by a clutter clearing poltergeist?) and each morning I awake to wonder who’s been tidying up? Will it continue or is it just a passing fad. Something to occupy my mind or even to stop me occupying my mind?
Picture by vintagecat under this creative commons license

No drunks in our house

Back in the day when I did my psychology education it soon became apparent that the young parent contingent would happily shout down any research that would point to any probable detrimental effect that parents could have on their offspring but who would alternatively shout from the rafters when other research appeared to show the gloriously positive effects parenting can affect.

So too with the possible link between parental drinking and binge drinking in the young.

The middle class parents for whom a couple of glasses of wine to ‘de-stress’ of an evening naturally dismiss such findings whilst scape-goating the under-classes instead and telling those pointing the nanny-state finger to linger a while  and instead point accusingly at the supposedly ‘feckless’ to see the real effects of poor parental role models. Another great ‘no thugs in our house‘ moment.

Still all classes now have a more convenient role model to blame.

Photo by davidjwbailey under this creative commons license

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Schoolies week and the culture of skulling it to excess

more about “BBC News – Schoolies week in Australi…“, posted with vodpod

I was only listening to a phone-in on ABC Canberra radio the other day which was debating the culture of drinking amongst the young in Australia.Whilst Australia is by no means embroiled in the kind of excessive alcohol consumption of the United Kingdom  (see league table for alcohol consumption by country but the rise in the level of young people taking part in acts of binge drinking is perceived to have increased.

Obviously Australia is a somewhat more macho culture where hard drinking can be seen as part of the supposed attraction of machismo. Witness the bare essential approach of many Australian pubs and bars and the bizarre availability of drive through ‘bottle shops’ (off licenses as we call them in the UK) to see the place drinking alcohol has in the culture.

Interestingly binge drinking has not been at the levels ‘enjoyed’ by the UK of late. Australian politicians are getting concerned in a way that British politicians do not seem to (our brilliant solution to binge drinking was to increase the hours that pubs and clubs open in the hope that our youth culture would suddenly go all European and be less likely to consume the greatest amount of alcohol in the shortest available time frame).

Sculling, by the way is an Australian term for knocking back alcohol. Cultural differences and all that.

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Costing Complimentary Medicine On The NHS

more about “Truth behind NHS’s homeopathy budget“, posted with vodpod

The data we have shows that from 2005 – 2008 almost £12m was spent on Homeopathic remedies by the NHS.
This works out at an average cost of £170 per episode, per patient with a remarkable £3067 cost per inpatient.

Interesting piece about homeopathy costings here when offered via Britain’s NHS. In the early stages of my meniere’s, in fact before it was correctly diagnosed, I was actually sent to the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital.I had an open mind.

Therein I was in the waiting area for 2 hours (this was the early 90′s and the place didn’t seem particularly busy in the way a hospital often seems to be). Once I was in the consultation room it was decided that I was to receive accupuncture for my tinnitus and then emerging dizzy spells.

This took the form of burning needles placed along the upper part of my bare feet(yeah like I’d keep my shoes on but thought I’d better clarify). It was painless. But was it..er…pointless? (sorry weak pun alert).

Peace And Love

I was warned that (in a Ringo Starr ‘warning you with peace and love’ kind of way) that once the accupuncture had been completed there was a danger that I would experience a “rush of euphoria” at some point over the next hour and a half whilst travelling home so I should “just be careful”.

I was a model of caution on my journey home by tube and train and made sure as much as possible I didn’t stand too close to pregnant women, small children or those of a particular infirmity in case I was to literally explode with energised joy whilst in a confined space and perhaps might cause inadvertent injury or distress to those unwittingly close by.

I’m sorry to report that nothing euphoric transpired during those 90 minutes or indeed during the weeks following.

Quack

I hadn’t asked for a homeopathy referral but my GP must have taken this alternative approach seriously. Perhaps there was evidence that the power of the placebo effect for some outweighed the cost of bouncing around the NHS referral system until an adequate specialist hit the nail on the head. Perhaps I was classified as an hysteric for badgering my GP over things that seemed awry with my hearing and balance? Who knows?

In the end some months later I attended a specialist ear nose and throat clinic in London whereupon after a cat scan, a poke in the eye with a lengthen piece of cotton wool and the pouring of hot water into one of my ears (yes now doesn’t that sound like quakery when I actually write it down?) I was diagnosed with meniere’s.

Playing The Lottery

These days the NHS is a postcode lottery and heading again for a huge funding shortfall so no doubt many less proven complimentary services such as homeopathy and even, dare I say NHS funded counselling (the evidence for the latter’s effectiveness to cost ratio is not clear cut by any means) will no doubt face some tough reassessment within various PCT budgets.

Related meniere’s posts

Adopting Patterns And Expectations

From ‘An idea in practice-using the human givens approach’. One of a series of books I’m ploughing through at the moment.