Foundary to Close (by sarah)

Basically my favourite bar and art gallery in London is closing - this was where I had my 25th birthday (or was it the 26ths?), it is where Alaric used to take me to meet up with geeky people who knew when transits of space stations where going to happen and were to look even in the built up area. It is where my friends have had their art work displayed and where I was concidering doing an exhibition 🙁

Sucky sucky - and why? Is it not doing well? No! The site its on is being developed into a hotel and yet another main stream gallery - like we need any more of them especially in London :/

Anyway you can read more about it here.

A Case For the GMC (by sarah)

As some of you know around the time we started this blog my uncle died in horrific circumstances in Hospital and it has only just come before the General Medical Council which will probably produce little result.

There have been arguments over weather it was mansluaghter, murder or gross negligence etc...

I ended up holding Benny down whilst the emergancy physiotherapist attempted to manually pump his lungs out where the feeding tube had been switched on whilst in his lung 🙁

This broke his ribs but was the only hope to save his life by this point plus there were many things wrong like no water reservior in the breathing machine so he was drying out. Benny had Downes' Sydrome and was very scared that night, he was getting better and though it could be argued his quality of life was low - he thought he had a good deal as long as there was enough cake.

Basically even if it was done as a mercy act it was definatly NOT, it was horrible and he was scared and the knock on effect in the family where people have held themselves to blame becuase they trusted doctors to know when to switch the feeding machine on. (Benny when scared could fight over being fed).

Anyway - this is not the only case like this I have been hearing off. Al's grandmother was put on a drip with no Gloucose in it (as was Benny and also a friend of mine and Al's who was in hospital due to forgetting to eat :/ ). The Doctors told family that if they fed the old woman they would no longer get any state help to look after her. A nurse has told me a similar story about her grandfather which was one of the reasons she wont work for certain hospital trusts.

So as far as I can tell there is illigal euthenasia in our hospitals or something very amiss in the way we educate drs and nurses! And worse people who want to die and plead are kept alive and those who can not defend themselves are dying in the most horrific ways such as being what amounts to being starved to death or drowned.

I can only hope that it is ineptitude and they aren't really viscous killers and that an education reform could fix these things. My own experience of hospitals is that they are indeed very broken and need a massive over haul. Including sacking all the foot shufflers who pretend they can't here you're heart monitor alarm go off >:(

Anyway I started this post becuase I've written a poem about that night at the hospital and was intending to post it but thought I should add in some background.

A Case for the GMC

Wizzen broken monkey
Skin grey
Wrinkeled crepe paper
Downey whiskers
Sharpe dowdy white
In striped pajarmers
Convict of the ward
On death row
Drowning in food
A mistake
A cull?
Tortured
by those who save
Broken ribs
From pumping you out
Cracked lips
From resusitation
Now blue
Eyes revolve
As a horse in panic
They can not save you
They can't now
But they did not want to
Did they?

Digital Disaster Looming (by sarah)

Last week saw Digital Economy Bill passed, meaning it will become law. This particular bill is badly written and could have far-reaching consequencies for everyone. My first issue with this was that they were trying to whip it through parliament without proper discussion; the MPs don't understand the potential issues that could result from this.

One such issue is the possibility of having your internet access cut off to your house if copyright infringment is suspected. This means that houses with teenagers in would be in danger of suddenly loosing their internet and if Mum or Dad works from home it could cripple the household. Plus the fact that this cutting off can happen just on suspicion means an environment of vigilante rule and sabotage. You're cut off and then have to prove you're not guilty - this is contradictory to how our legal system is supposed to work, isn't it?

Saying the parents should have control over the teenagers is stupid to anyone who remembers being a teenager and, worse, some teenagers happen to be past the age of majority and therefore legal entities in their own right but are likely to still be living at home.

Or... student halls or shared accommodation. What happens when one student gets the internet cut off from an entire Halls with like 150 students desperatly trying to do their course work and trying to access the library archives? This would be done via the internet, funnily enough. The same would go for kids doing GCSEs and A levels - so it suddenly becomes ok to cut of a house, rendering those kids at a social disadvantage during their exams, which could lead to either/or more stress or lower grades - thinking about this you could kill the kids' prospects before they've even began. There are charities out there trying to get internet access into disadvantaged households for this very reason and the Government want to give big business the right to take it away on a suspicion?

Have I missed something here?

And when they say copyright infringement, they mean all the minor stuff that most people didn't even know was infringement (put it this way even the Politicians themselves have managed to infringe copyright during their campaigns without realising it!).

This is just one part of this bill - there are many more which, if taken as written, would be equally as scary if not more so. This will affect companies that rely on the web (which is an awful lot these days especially the small/medium business). Can you imagine being a shop whose main source of revenue is through your web orders and suddenly wham, bam, your premises are cut off? This would be enough to cripple you plus there are other things being mooted such as blocking of actual websites - oh how the commercial competitors could sabatage you with that one - think about it.

The thing is, this isn't over yet - and as I said before whilst I have a voice and its safe to use it I will. For more information on what can be done know look here.

Debill – A Protest Poem (by sarah)

Debasing
Electronic economy
Being blinded by
Illogical idosyncrasies
Leading literate
Lynchings

Caroline Herschel (by sarah)

Caroline is the sister of the more famous astronomer Sir Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel but though he is known and well respected she is often seen as just his assistant.

Born 16 March 1750 to what really amounts to a rather abusive family in Germany she owed a lot to her brother for rescuing her at risk of his own freedom. He bought her to England where he had already started to establish himself as an astronomer. The siblings were basically self made financially and work hard.

Though she started off just assisting him she ended up carrying out the brunt of the work rising before her brother to write things up and generally going to bed after him.

She also made a great many discoveries on her own and even after her brothers death worked hard to varify his discoveries something that is often seen as dull but is if anything more valuable to the world at large. She produced a catalogue of nebulae which she recieved a Gold Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society in 1828. This helped her nephew John Herschel in his work - she took on the role of raising John and was the honoured guest at his graduation dispite an initial falling out with her sister-in-law.

Caroline and Mary Somerville were also elected as the first honorary women members of the Royal Astronomical Society In 1835. She obtain many other rewards and has craters and asterial bodies named after her - she was still going at 96 with the astronomy!

During work with her brother they both sustained physical hardship and injuries such as frost bite and in Carolines case being impaled on a peg holding down the telescope 🙁

She was a brave woman who had to over come alot on a personal front, her brothers hogging of the lime light is more an artifact of the age they lived in than a reflection on them. But even in such an age she won awards that would not be awarded to a women again in well over a hundred years.

And though she did not have any children she none the less raised a child and continued in her scientific endervours without neglect of his needs.

This is why I have chosen Caroline for this years Ada Lovelace Day - whilst I was in the meteoritics department I came across articles about her and it inspired me to keep going 🙂