CABINET A DEUX

Now that I’ve got my hot flushes under control and downstairs loo sorted, time to crack on with this cabinet as DIY project number 2 is already waiting in the wings and I need the floor space.

Cabinet so far

Where was I? Ah yes, jazzing up the top section with a creative stripey design. Or at least trying to.

Re-vamping the top

I started off by painting the exposed edging strip the same teal colour as the rest of the cabinet. Looks okay but even though I carefully sanded the area prior to painting you can still make out thin strata lines under the paint.

Front edge painted Milltown colour

Perhaps I should have applied a light coat of wood filler or some wonder face cream to the area to reduce the appearance of fine lines or wrinkles.

I could have just left things at that point but a small nagging voice in the back of my head was urging me to unleash creative forces. Three coats of gold paint later, we now have a glitzy gold strip along the front edge. Looks nice and goes well with the cabinet legs.

Gold coloured edge

As the veneer on the top of the cabinet looked so nice, it seemed a pity to cover it with paint. It’s been left in its original state but the high back beading strips have been painted teal to match the main body of the cabinet.

Back bead strips painted in Milltown colour

The finished top

With the top finished off and the door re-attached, all that is left is to varnish the whole lot then add those last little touches before it can be given the final completion sign off.

GENERATION V

Not satisfied with having annoyed most businesses, workers and retirees, Vote Fear Keir is now reaching out to the nation’s ‘youf’ to save his bacon by giving all 16 yr old peeps the right to go to the polls.

Considering half of this demographic probably can’t even spell Polling Station and as most never leave the confines of their untidy bedrooms unless its to eat or pee then Farage needn’t lose sleep over this latest proposal.

Somehow, I can’t see a mobilised army of revolutionary Generation Vote storming political bastions with demands to free all Pokemon, reduce the cost of Xboxes or legalise cannabis. At 16 I wasn’t even remotely aware or interested in what happened in Parliament. There were always more pressing concerns such as hanging out with mates, sneaking into nightclubs/pubs or devising ways to wear make-up without being caught by dad.

To many youngsters, political parties are things you gatecrash armed with bottles of alcohol purloined from parental cocktail cabinets.

Apathy often rules in the 16 -18 demographic so how will the Government engage with this new electorate? Perhaps they could sex up elections by changing the current stuffy old polling station way of voting into something exciting like a game show, where punters can vote via smartphone from the comfort of their sweaty-sock-smelling teen caves.

I envisage future elections rather like a show akin to The Traitors where MPs sit round a huge table wearing voluminous hooded black capes making promises about future policies. Voters could then use a QR code to eject any ‘traitors’ who are clearly lying through their back teeth and not to be trusted. The last person left in the room that lies most convincingly gets to be Prime Minister. Simple. Far more entertaining than the current general election process. Throw in a free Dominos and you’re likely to have young people voting in droves!

Kevin & Perry go to the polls? I can’t see it happening unless their parents drag them along. Isn’t there the risk that having allowed 16 – 18 year old’s the chance to vote, they’ll also want to do what every other adult does legally ie drink, get tattoos and sign up to numerous buy now, pay later agreements? Could this be the thin end of the wedge for Sir Keir?

THE PLUMBER ALWAYS RINGS TWICE

No point ringing once because with the cacophony coming from the gas works taking place outside, the dinging doorbell has about as much chance of being heard as an ant fart.

Chaos in the cul-de-sac

Angle grinding the concrete pavement outside my bedroom window at 7.00 am on my day off – I mean, come on!!!!  And what do you call that reinstatement work?  It's a bloody mess!

The pavement in front of my drive - what a mess!

Still, eventually the faint sound of knocking came through above the din to reveal a sweaty-faced plumber laden with tools. Poor bugger had had to park half way up the road there being no room in the already overcrowded gas van mayhem at the bottom of the cul-de-sac.

Half a day later in temperatures that would melt Antarctica, a downstairs cloakroom slowly emerges from its cardboard box chrysalis and magically morphs into a beautiful porcelain butterfly.

The world’s smallest back-to-wall toilet, the Roper Rhodes Zest, sits proudly in front of a white gloss cabinet along the back wall.

You can't get smaller than this

A compact square hand-basin complete with brushed brass coloured tap and matching clicker waste hangs on the wall near the door.

Wyndam compact basin with Levo brushed brass tap

Brass coloured towel and loo roll holders decorated with ornate swans (Anthropologie) fitted on the tiles to replace the tatty old chrome ones. Swans were the closest thing I could find to compliment the flying cranes of the wallpaper.

Anthropologie swan towel ring

Anthropologie swan toilet roll holder

Vintage brass light pull (Ebay)

Everything flushes or gushes as it should thanks to the sterling efforts of the plumber and his mate who had to work in anything but ideal conditions which was clearly reflected in the £700 bill hitting my inbox later that evening. Thanks lads, we couldn’t have done it without you!

No more racing upstairs for a widdle as we can now contemplate life, the universe and everything from the comfort of our spanking new loo. I promised the other half a poopy parlour fit for a king - I hope this one ticks all his turdy boxes.

BEFORE

AFTER

DICKENSIAN POVERTY

Please sir, can I have some more bacon?

Yesterday’s BBC headlines were so full of reports of Dickensian style child poverty that I half expected old Ebenezer Scrooge himself to leap off screen into my lap as I was typing this post.

I mean living in rat filled houses is no joke but is the author of said article expecting toddlers to ring Pest Control to complain about rodent infestations? Nope that’s definitely a job for mummy or daddy.

Having read the article, two questions swirled round the old noggin like a lump in a saucepan of Bisto:

1) What is meant by the term ‘child’? Are we referring to the legal definition of minor ie a person under 18 years of age or is there another benchmark being used by the Government to outline the hideous deprivation encountered by the youth of today?

2) What is meant by the term ‘poverty’? Since most minors own few tangible or financial assets in their own right then I struggle to understand how children can indeed be poor.

Dr Google’s Dictionary shows the below as a definition of the word ‘poverty’:

Poverty is generally defined as the state of being extremely poor, lacking sufficient resources to meet basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing. It can be measured in both absolute and relative terms. Absolute poverty focuses on the lack of resources to meet basic needs, while relative poverty looks at an individual's or household's income in comparison to the median income within a society.

So, in my mind, it’s not really children that are poor in themselves but it’s their parents/guardians who lack wonga. Looking at the above definition then it’s more a case of Relative Poverty than Child Poverty but using the term ‘child’ is likely to carry more gravitas and stoke up the outraged a lot more than just reporting on the fact that some families can’t make ends meet.

Part of me feels for these people. Decades ago, I was a single mother raising 2 children with an oversized mortgage to finance and a job paying slightly over the threshold for benefits. No Government assistance for you, lassie - maybe God will provide? Of course, no heaven-sent cheques ever landed on the doormat.

I soon realised personal wealth was the result of choices made in life and one would need to look closely at what choices families affected by ‘child poverty’ are making because as I discovered in my years of hardship, you can cover most bases by just making a few sacrifices.

Here are a few financial life choices we all face – if you were on the bread-line, what would you choose?

Do you choose to have a smartphone that might be on a contract plan costing £30 per month or do you choose to scale back your phone to an old-fashioned pay-as-you-go brick style one and use savings to pay off your energy bill? Same goes for expensive gym memberships or other monthly subscription services. There’s a lot to be said for free exercise in a local park, on the beach or buying DVDs in a charity shop that you can re-watch. It’s a £1 for 4!

Do you choose to go to the hair or beauty salon for a regular cut/blow dry, waxing or shellac nails which cost you around £25 or more or do you choose to grow your hair, paint your own nails, use a lady razor then blow the savings on kid’s shoes/school uniforms?

Do you choose to smoke, drink or gamble every week - £16 packet of ciggies, £5.50 for a pint and £10 for a punt, estimated expenditure of approx. £31.50 or do you choose to spend this cash on school lunches for your hungry little darlings? Same goes for designer coffees, meal deals or takeaways which often add up to a significant sum every week. You can live without! Better still – just make your own!

Do you choose to follow the latest fashions or drive a top of the range car or do you choose to wear the same old glad rags and pootle about on the bus? Kids usually go free or half fare on the bus or heaven forbid, you could actually walk to school which would be good for both physical and mental health. OK so demographics may rule out buses in a lot of rural areas but I’m sure you could do with a lot less cheap tat from Temu, Shein or other such websites.

As a struggling ex-single mum, I even went as far as getting rid of my telly and using cardboard inner soles to make my holey shoes last longer in order to make sure I had enough to keep a roof over our heads. Even changing the telephone landline so that it only received incoming calls made a big financial difference (no smartphones back in the 1980s).

I have two wonderful grown-up kids who lived through thick and thin yet have managed to survive into mid-life with not a single mental health issue. Both know the value of working hard to earn money.

Personal wealth or poverty is one of those Schrodinger’s Cat conundrums because we are all both rich and poor at the same time at every given moment. What? It’s true. Let me elaborate further on this point.  Elaborate me!

Supposing that personal wealth was calculated based on the present value (PV) of all the tangible assets owned plus money held by an individual. Add it all up and we’d arrive at a total value (TV). Now imagine we’ve done this for everyone in the UK. Compare your own PV to the PV of anyone else on this list and you’ll see that you’re both richer than some and poorer than others at the same time.  Who knew?

Bear in mind that the total value of all your worldly wealth also fluctuates pretty much on a daily basis because the underlying present value of tangible assets such as houses, cars or shares changes according to market valuations and loads of other factors. This means that rankings on a list of rich or poor people are like shifting sands pulled about by a daily tide. It’s all a matter of where you end up when the tide's in or out.

Without wishing to sound smug or preachy (I am?), at the end of the day what I’m trying to say is it all comes down to choices. We’ve also got to remember that there’ll always be HAVEs and HAVE NOTs in life – not every child can have Nike trainers or holidays to the Bahamas. It’s just the way it is.

And as for lifting the 2-child benefit cap – I have to vote NO on that one. Having children is most definitely a lifestyle choice and one that should be made according to the means you have available. If you can afford to have 3 or more kids then great - the more future taxpayers, the better but it shouldn’t be a case of popping out sprogs just to get paid so you can avoid going to work or live a life on benefits. The taxpayer cannot be expected to foot the bill for your personal Spice Girls line up or football team.

In any case lifting the cap will do little to remedy the situation for some families because again, it all comes down to looking at the choices being made and if parents are not prepared to make changes/sacrifices then giving them extra benefits is quite frankly a waste of time and taxpayer money. Come on, we all know it won’t be spent on school dinners or uniforms. 

What’s needed are better mechanisms to identify families who qualify under this ‘child poverty’ banner then provide them with dedicated debt/lifestyle counselling so they can make the right choices then stand proudly on their own two feet.

You’ve got to cut your cloth according to how much you ACTUALLY HAVE and not how much some society profiling bureaucrat sat in an air-conditioned office thinks you should have.

And as for the bacon - price of a packet generally under £2, packet of bread is about £1 so for less than the cost of a pint, kids could have bacon butties if their parents wanted them to.  

Shame on you BBC.  This is not NEWS!  Just Government propaganda guaranteed to pander to those do-gooding campaigners who probably have never been 'poor' themselves.

CHECK A&E TRADE

Well, well, well – I can’t wait to see how Two-Tier Health Kier is going to get this initiative off the ground

Front page of Saturday’s edition of The Times outlines a new proposal to link patient satisfaction to NHS budget payments by allowing punters to give feedback on services received. 

Leave a review on Check A&E Trade

Will Wes Streeting be setting up a new Check A&E Trade or a Hospital Trip Adviser type website where patients will be able to post reviews after appointments? I do hope so as I can’t wait to read other people’s comments on their experiences with the No Hope Service.

Performance related pay has been the mainstay of financial services for decades so I applaud this radical proposal to create a meritocracy in delivering healthcare. Those who provide the best service should be amply rewarded and those who don’t should be put on a Performance Improvement Plan with further sanctions imposed if targets are still not met.

However, my experiences of working in PRP (Peformance Related Pay) environments is both positive and negative. As an employee motivated by the thought of an extra couple of thousand quid in my pay packet at year end, I always strived to give 120% and go ‘above and beyond’ to use the bank’s own corporate jargon. My January pay packet was always a fat wallet making all those 12-hour days very worthwhile but not so for those at the bottom of the heap.

PRP breeds resentment. Those who can’t or won’t step up to the plate get de-motivated, resentful and even less inclined to meet targets. Performance Improvement Plans often do little to change the status quo.

As an ex-manager, I remember the annual PRP process as a vicious bun-fight. Departmental heads locked in an airtight room screaming at each other as they vie for a slice of the PRP pie for their staff. Oh yes, there’s only a finite budget allocated for staff reward schemes usually divided into Top, Middle and Bottom buckets into which all staff are categorised. The bucket you end up in determines your annual bonus so you’ve got to hope your manager has the loudest voice.

Assessing performance against PRP criteria is an exhausting and divisive process. It’s hard to remain objective and not let your own personal feelings or judgements come to the fore when ranking members of your own team making it even harder to come up with a Top, Middle or Bottom list.  Can you imagine how difficult it would be to fairly assess one hospital against another?

In life there’s always winners or losers. What criteria will the Government use to rank NHS trusts in terms of performance and what reward will this be linked to? Will they award a fixed amount for every positive patient review? Or will rewards be skewed by politics such as levelling up agendas? How will they deal with negative reviews? And what if all the best performing hospitals were in the South, would they get larger budgets than those in the allegedly deprived North? There are a million questions to be answered.

Rather than implement a standalone performance related pay system linked to patient feedback, the Government would do better to implement process changes to weed out all those needless bureaucratic institutionalised ways of working followed religiously by the NHS. The current health bible needs to be ripped up and re-written so it is a thinner tome. To reduce waiting lists what is needed are quicker patient pathways to effective treatments not that meandering A to B route via C, D and E in order to get the drugs or interventions needed.

Carrot and stick as a means of improving the NHS, cutting waiting lists and achieving excellence in service delivery sounds great from a patient’s perspective but how this will work in practice remains to be seen. 

In principle this idea could make poor performers buck up particularly if budgets are at risk but to be sure there’ll be squealers who’ll cry foul at these proposed changes.  

My 5 star review will be given when my ongoing neck problem has been properly sorted but as the NHS have washed their hands of me claiming there is nothing more that can be done then for now its a big fat 0 on the scoreboard.