Amateur Brain Surgery

Just because women were treated like idiots for centuries doesn’t give us the right to take revenge on men.

The Nurse remembers when very few women had decent jobs, if they worked at all. 

The telly showed us climbing all over hunky blokes wearing ‘Denim’ aftershave, breasts heaving. 

Or flitting around the living room in a frilly pinny dusting the skirting boards. As secretaries, fair game for male colleagues, leaving work when they married as a matter of course. Or as perfectly groomed, empty-headed ornaments.  

Yup, women were patronised and repressed. True, we were treated as second class citizens. Too fluffy and pink to manage anything more intellectual than getting to grips with a recipe for fairy cakes.  But things are very different today.

The Nurse never liked bullying. She might be an evil, pointy-teethed mass murderer but she isn’t the type to pick on people, take the piss and make them look stupid. 

So she’s disturbed to see the trend for dissing men on TV continuing. With the end of the new century’s first decade fast approaching, we seem to be stuck in an ugly rut.

Today’s TV ads and programmes are the diametric opposite of the ’60s and ’70s classics The Nurse remembers so well.

Switch on to see inept men struggling with simple household tasks. While super-efficient, shiny women look on, smiling or tutting with ill concealed contempt.

Sharp lady business moguls wipe executive floors with their male counterparts. Male stereotypes are reinforced left right and centre. Witness Mr Muscle ads where the skinny, weedy bloke is rescued by the macho products of the unpleasantly muscled and ‘packaged’ superhero.

So what’s going on? The Nurse thinks we’ve gone a bit too far the other way. Perhaps women were repressed for so long that when society took the pressure off we went crazy with freedom.

Which is understandable. When The Nurse left home she went a bit mad herself, staying up late and partying too hard in reaction to her super-strict childhood. And Russia’s criminal classes - released by the fall of uber Socialism - went a bit mad too. 

The Nurse would prefer to a real, honest equality instead. Come on girls, we’ve had our fun. It’s time to start treating men like human beings and equals rather than recalcitrant children.  Have some respect. If you were as old as the Nurse you’d remember when the boot was on the other foot and you’d tread more sensitively. 

Some people have imaginary friends. The Nurse goes imaginary walking.

Before being banged up The Nurse was a keen walker. She’d stride the South Downs Way twenty shining miles at a time, drowning in the spiralling song of skylarks. She’d push her lithe body up the soaring crags of Langdale Pikes. She’d wander the Cleveland Way collecting owl pellets and smelling sun-dried heather. And she’d sit in cool spring woods next to placid pools watching buzzing, jewelled dragonflies.  

Now, limited to a few scant minutes in a grim, grey yard twice a week, much more imagination is required. The Nurse works hard at recalling the sights and smells of the Lake District, Downs, Pennines, hills and Dales of lovely England. On a beautiful day like this her memories are especially poignant.   

If she had the chance she’d be out there again. Crawling from her tent at six on a bluer than blue, summer-frosty Helvellyn morning. Hitching her rucksack onto her tired back after a day following the chalky spine of the South Downs parallel to a balmy sea. Or happily tearing out her hair on low growing bushes as she ventures deep into Sussex’s  cool, echoing, bird-loud forests. 

In a rare mellow mood, The Nurse wonders whether all that murder and mayhem was worth it. She misses the outdoors. Sometimes when a visitor from the outside world wafts past her cell she can almost taste it. A tantalising whiff of oak tree. Sun-heated sheep-gnawed grass. The pleasure / pain of sunburn after a strenous hike on the year’s first really hot day.  

On the other hand, the metallic thrill of her amateur brain surgery exploits was hard to beat. To someone like The Nurse, screams of terror can’t really be surpassed by a robin’s song. Observing the caterpillar’s elegant progress up a stem doesn’t beat the thrill of bundling some poor sod into the back of a van. And walking the length of Wainwright’s majestic Coast to Coast Walk will never put her amateur trepanning exploits into the shade.  Once a monster, always a monster.

The Nurse, nevertheless, envies all you free people. Getting up at the weekend with a day in the glorious countryside to look forward to. Even just a walk in the park or round the block. Bastards. 

The Nurse is amused to read today’s Daily Mail story about stroke victim Alan Brown.

Alan recovered from 16 hours of surgery only to discover a completely new talent. Suddenly he’s painting like a man possessed, well enough to pass a fine art degree. Before his operation he could barely draw a stick man.

Some people, as The Nurse knows very well from decades here in prison, aren’t so lucky.

Take Simon, the guy three cells down. He was a Fund Manager with a massive gaff in central London, a trophy wife and two nice kids in public school before he was clonked on the head by a passing felon toting half a brick.

His brain injury left him completely unable to resist draping himself from head to toe in bling, designer frocks and Jimmy Choos. Harmless in itself. But the police took a very dim view when he took to accosting small boys outside the Co-Op in Mayfair, claiming to be their Mummy.

Others are more fortunate. Wayne in cell seventy six arrived here convicted of mass murder, kidnapping, arson and starting - single handedly - several vicious wars in lesser known African countries. A proper nutter who smelled like a stoat. Gimlet eyes, permantly moist palms and an unfortunate twitch. The type of bloke who’d cut your goolies off for a quid, never mind sell his granny.

A judicious yet wholly experimental bash on the head by The Nurse soon sorted him out. These days we call him Saint Wayne. He’s helpful, self effacing and immaculately polite. Since his ‘illness’ he’s developed a talent for acting out every single episode of Shameless, word perfect, which makes him a popular chap. And, best of all, when The Nurse and her fellow inmates get bored he lets them crucify him. He says he likes it.     

Adapt and evolve… or die

Economics and Darwinism  have a lot in common. 

The Nurse has been keeping a weather eye on General Motors for a few years now - ensconced in clink at Her Majesty’s Pleasure - and she isn’t surprised they’ve gone belly up.  

Over the past decade GM resisted positive change on a spectacular scale. While many Americans turned to smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles, GM continued to focus on gas guzzling monsters. Perhaps they were too big to change quickly enough. Or too arrogant. Or too inflexible.  Or too short sighted.

Whatever the reasons, this is a sad day. The death of GM presents a salutory tale. To survive and thrive in the long term - just like living creatures - businesses need to stay lean, nimble and flexible. Or risk extinction.

A report in last week’s Guardian newspaper highlighted how an alarming number of drivers on Britain’s roads don’t know the meaning of various common road signs. Motorists fail to recognise road signs.

Apparently around two thirds (67%) of drivers were unable to identify the sign indicating a zebra crossing. Apparently only 12% of the 2000 motorists surveyed actually knew the meaning of the eight signs they were tested on.

If you want to test yourself have a go at the Guardian’s online road sign quiz.

Now I’m going to blow my own trumpet a little as I got them all correct. How did you do?

One of the reasons cited for the appalling performance amongst the drivers surveyed is that drivers don’t refresh their knowledge of road signs after taking their driving tests. This has provided ammunition to those campaigning for compulsory re-tests for those convicted of traffic offences and those who have been driving for more than a certain number of years.

An aspect of this survey which was not reported, but which I would find interesting, is the contrast between male and female drivers. Do male drivers have better knowledge of road signs than women? Many other traffic related statistics suggest that men are by far the worst drivers with 82% of those found guilty of speeding offences being male and 94% of those convicted of causing death by dangerous driving being male.

The growing UK personal car leasing market is making powerful cars more accessible to the most accident prone group of drivers, young men. Young drivers have a far higher risk of being involved in an accident than older drivers. Statistics show that an 18 year old is more than three times as likely to be involved in an accident and young male drivers have significantly higher accident rates than young female drivers.

Some people argue that the solution to these road safety issues is simple. Don’t allow young people onto the roads until they are at least 25 years old and then retest everybody every five years. What would you do?

As the marvellous Mr Obama and his science men chip away at a decade’s worth of Bush-inspired anti-intellectualism, The Nurse is delighted to find a corresponding hike in atheism taking place over the water.  

As reported in the New York Times last week, unbelievers are coming out of the closet in droves. So much so that the US’s new atheist activism is being likened to the emergence of the 1980s Gay Rights movement.

So it’s out with Bush’s legacy of ‘truthiness’, the practice of using personal gut reactions rather than hard facts to drive policy decisions. Instead it looks like Obama’s pledge to restore science to it’s “proper place” is already bearing fruit. 

The Nurse knows what kind of US leader she prefers. Not one who allows creationism to be taught in schools . Definitely not one who is deeply suspicious of intellectual excellence. But a leader who understands that if we descend into superstition at this stage in the game we’ll be totally and royally stuffed. A leader who’s spiritual but not overtly religious. Someone who is so deeply committed to reason that he’s the first president in history to appoint a Nobel laureate to his cabinet.

Obama? The Nurse wishes we had an Obama of our own. Perhaps, if she escaped from prison, she could hit stateside and bring the man back to the UK as a gift to the nation? Not kidnapping as such, she’d just sort of borrow him…

The latest revelations regarding MPs expenses claims have been the most shocking yet in this erupting scandal. The Daily Telegraph revealed details of Tory MPs’ expenses claims which put many of those made by Labour MPs in the shade.

For example Douglas Hogg, the former agriculture secretary, submitted a claim that included over £2000 to have the moat around his country estate cleared and James Arbuthnot MP claimed for the cleaning of the swimming pool at his country residence.

Michael Ancram, the Marquis of Lothian, claimed more than £14,000 a year in expenses while owning three properties worth an estimated £8million, none of which had a mortgage. It has emerged that many members of parliament have been making claims for their country homes for many years, going back to the time when receipts were no longer required to be submitted.

The actor Stephen Fry has hit back at the media for having made such a meal of this latest scandal. In his opinion journalists are some of the worst offenders when it comes to fraudulent expenses claims. He says that it is a ‘jounrnalistic made-up frenzy’.

However, there are many people in the UK who would disagree. The amounts claimed by these MPs may appear to some people, like Stephen Fry, to be trivial but for those earning relatively low salaries, like nurses (a grade A nurse earns between £10,050 and £12,615 a year), these questionable expenses claims are plainly wrong and far more significant than the war in Afghanistan, the current financial crisis or global warming.

So Egypt has begun mass slaughter of pigs and Ghana has banned the import of pork as a precaution against swine flu. Both are pointless as the swine flu virus is transmitted human to human and cannot be caught from pork meat. I think they just don’t like pigs.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has now ‘rebranded’ the virus as virus influenza A or H1N1, rather than the misleading but more memorable name ’swine flu’.

It has now been confirmed that the virus has spread from Mexico to over 15 countries in North America, Europe and Asia. The good news is that, so far, this particular strain of the flu virus is looking no worse than any other mild seasonal influenza.

While it’s true that any form of influenza is a potentially life threatening disease, there is nothing so far to suggest that this latest outbreak is actually any more dangerous than other seasonal rounds of flu. But that is not the message presented by much of the media. The newspapers in the UK have done very little to reassure people, instead choosing to fuel and promote fear with sensational headlines and scary statistics predicting how many could die.

The EU Health Commissioner, Androulla Vassiliou, has said that there is ‘no need to panic’ as Europe is well prepared and a global epidemic or pandemic would not necessarily cause widespread deaths. She is clearly hedging her bets but, so far, indications are that this outbreak will not result in the death toll predicted by some of our newspapers.

One positive aspect of this current flu drama is that people are being reminded of the need to be aware of how they might catch or transmit the disease. I’ve become increasingly disgusted, in recent years, by bad manners and the lack of consideration for others shown by some people when they sneeze or cough. It’s actually become rare to see someone use a handkerchief or tissue. Instead people sneeze or cough into their hands and then use their germ-laden hand to grasp a door handle or hand rail.

Only a couple of weeks ago a young lady behind me on a crowded London tube train sneezed directly onto the back of my neck. I could feel the wetness of her sputum dribbling down my back, but before I had a chance to remonstrate with her regarding her complete lack of consideration she had hopped off the train. If she’d done the same thing during the past week she would have potentially had the whole train compartment to herself, or even provoked an act of ‘flu rage’.

Ref: BBC News

I’m the newest member of the illustrious Amateur Brain Surgery Club so I thought I should introduce myself.

I am ‘Matron’ - remember the ‘Carry On’ movies?

I’ve been associated with this band of miscreants for many years, since studying at Sussex University. I am a close friend and associate of the nurse (sadly currently incarcerated at her majesties pleasure) and up until only a couple of months ago I lived in Brighton. Daily I would commute to my job here in the city of London.

But my expenses were simply getting too much so I, like Obama’s cabinet, had to make some drastic cuts. The first thing I did was look at how to reduce the amount I was spending on travelling to work. The only option was to take a flat in London and give up my life by the sea side. What a pity.

So I employed a reputable London removals firm to pack up my belongings and take them to a new flat in Stepney. Instead of the early morning train from Brighton to Victoria I can now lie in bed for an hour before taking the tube to my work place, only ten minutes away. The downside is that the quality of my life has changed dramatically.

The warmer spring weather has made this change abundantly clear. I can no longer pop out for some fresh air and a stroll along Brighton sea front. I no longer have the South Downs on my doorstep encouraging me to get out into the countryside at the weekends.

Instead there are the London theatres, cinemas, shops, museums and art galleries. But I am really missing some of the simple pleasures that I enjoyed while living in Brighton. What should I do?

My current plan is to try and stick living in London for the summer to see how good or bad it can be and then re-assess my situation in the Autumn. I’ve had to sign a six month lease on my flat so I suppose I’m stuck here for the time being.

London is a great city with so much to offer but I’m already pining for the fresh air, the seaside and the South Downs of Brighton.

Another piece of video footage showing a female protester apparently being assaulted by a sergeant in the Territorial support group. This latest footage appears to confirm reports that the brutality inflicted upon Ian Tomlinson was not an isolated incident.

The IPCC now have this case to investigate as well. They certainly have their work cut out for them. But what on earth were the police at the G20 protests thinking? It’s looking like they were primed for a fight and instead of controlling people they resorted to bully-boy tactics that should never have been used.

While it’s good to hear that the officers concerned have been suspended it will be months before the IPCC complete their investigations. By then will we have all forgotten how serious these offences were?

Ref: BBC News.