Zombie

so you want to laugh like Muttley?

“It’s mine!” is an apodictic claim of ownership …until the rightful owner snatches it back

dang it, such a shame you gave away that beautiful lace doily made by your great grandma - that deffo qualifies and so do your b/f’s Gucci bags - no question!

this is the place for frank admissions - maybe things you wouldn’t even admit to your closest friend or loved one So what gay stuff do you really really love? the more embarrassing, the more kitsch the better I love tea cosies, y’know those fluffy knitted things old ladies like Miss Marple put over tea pots to keep their freshly brewed beverage nice ‘n’ warm er, cosy …and I’ve just spotted this very tasteful crocheted creation on a specialist website How could any gay home be complete without one?

Future governments, inspired by this latest computer attack, may be tempted to adopt sci-fi writer David Langford’s suggested minor amendments to Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics A robot will not harm authorized Government personnel but will terminate intruders with extreme prejudice. A robot will obey the orders of authorized personnel except where such orders conflict with the Third Law. A robot will guard its own existence with lethal antipersonnel weaponry, because a robot is bloody expensive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics

☠️ Dead threads don’t have to stay dead 💀 This newspaper article from December 2000 was written when newspapers were news that was printed on real paper but it’s an interesting read on the largely forgotten Polari, a secret slang or vocabulary of “outsiders”, which is what homosexuals were during the 19th and much of the 20th century, and which had a significant impact on British and Irish gay culture https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2000/dec/10/life1.lifemagazine3 When the Manchester UK branch of the the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence was formed they created, just for fun, a Polari version of the bible (please don’t look if you might be offended) More recently David Bowie used Polari in Girl Loves Me on his final studio album Blackstar, released 2016

It wasn’t Orwellian censorship it was a way of telling filthy jokes It’s a cliche that British humour doesn’t travel well but it’s true, and I think the reason is because so much of it is about playing tricks with words (puns, innuendo, double meanings etc) so the audience hears one thing but understands another. And that’s a big part of the pleasure - decoding the gags as they’re being told. The BBC radio show Round The Horn (RTH) ran from 1965-68 and was basically 30 minutes of prime time family-listening filth and innuendo every week and was probably the most popular comedy show As well as puns, innuendos and double entendres RTH also used Polari gay slang which began to be used in the British and Irish gay subcultures from the 19th century onwards with secret code words (because gay sex was a crime) and continued until around the time of partial decriminalisation in 1967. For example “cottage” in Polari doesn’t mean a charming little home with a thatched roof but a public toilet used for gay sex a la George Michael, and “upright” isn’t a type of piano but an erect penis RTH had two gay characters called Julian and Sandy and in one gag Sandy is telling Kenneth Horne (who fronted the show) that Julian is a brilliant pianist: "a miracle of dexterity at the cottage upright". So the audience hears that Julian is a good pianist - not very funny - but listeners who understood Polari (that’s all the gay listeners in the studio audience and listening at home, and probably quite a few straight ones too) would laugh because they instantly translated Sandy's line as a proud announcement that his boyfriend Julian is particularly skilled at manipulating his own and other men's erect penises in locales often raided by police in search of prosecutions for what was then legally deemed to be 'gross indecency'. So would American radio in 1965 have broadcast: ”Julian is very talented at wanking and bringing off guys with hardons”? Frankly, even if they would have done, the “straight” translated version just isn’t very funny.

This blog concerned LGBT/homophobia experienced by staff and patients in the NHS. Specifically, the blog is about staff/patient safety/welfare which is a “day to day” NHS issue because it requires continuous daily management which government cannot do and must be done in real time by the NHS itself. Staff and patient safety and welfare is clearly a day to day responsibility of NHS management because the NHS is obviously the employer of staff (responsible for recruitment, pay, employment conditions etc) and is the welfare/healthcare provider for patients (responsible for admissions, treatment, safety etc, including where clinical treatments are outsourced and/or private hospital facilities are used) - government does not do this since it is neither the employer of NHS staff (confirmed on pay slips etc) nor the healthcare/welfare provider for patients (confirmed in NHS patient discharge papers etc). …as you yourself confirmed with your question at the end “How can we say we focus on person-centred care when LGBT staff’s safety is so bluntly ignored by the NHS?” How much clearer could it be that the NHS had responsibility for this, and yet did nothing, when you said so yourself in such scathing terms? I included reference to some of the other management areas for which government is responsible simply in order to draw a distinction between LGBT staff/patient safety, which is definitely a day to day NHS responsibility, and these other areas which are clearly not. I also included a clear caveat that “this is not an exhaustive list” because I was merely posting a blog reply and not writing the textbook

I wasn’t expecting anyone to play the whole thing because it’s just clips of the Samantha + Sven running gags (basically they’re all the same) extracted from 20 odd years of shows and maybe listen to a minute or two to understand that @Mancunian’s post was using the same gag routine (“metaphors” generally aren’t gag related). Essentially it’s the same gag all the time but that’s what we laugh at over here in the UK What’s interesting, though, is that at the very same time these double meaning gay gags (which weren’t cruel) were running on family radio shows in the 50s and 60s, homosexuals were being arrested, prosecuted and locked up for years. It seems likely that these much loved radio shows assisted in changing public attitudes in Britain and helped bring about the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales in 1967

the staple of UK comedy routines has always been double meanings - pantos are basically just a succession of very rude double entendres and audiences love ‘em BBC radio comedy shows in the 50s and 60s were outrageous* with jokes that would never have been allowed (gay sex was illegal then) but wrapped up in seemingly innocuous words they got away with sheer filth One long running radio show started in 1972 called I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue is still going 50 years later. Two of the fictional characters called Samantha and Sven are always doing various things which on one level are perfectly innocent but those with a dirty mind (that’s everyone ) knows they’re not…

the bigger the better not so much, here…

yeah, this started in the 90s under the Conservatives, and Labour continued and expanded with the terrible “private finance initiative” (to massage govt debt figures) and then we had the so-called “internal market” (“competitive tendering” to commercial healthcare also took away NHS skills in these areas when they were “privatised”) - all of which just added further expensive layers of admin bureaucracy and paper pushing - cancelling out one of the BIG original benefits of the NHS which was to remove all the expensive costs of individual billing / invoicing / accounting / settlement, underwriting + claims management, policy issue + renewals etc of “individualised” commercial healthcare. The whole thing’s been disastrous. There was a bill going through around 2017 I believe, which was supposed to unravel much of the “internal market” madness, but I don’t know if that’s gone through. The blame must be shared by governments of both political parties. They have both used (abused) healthcare as a political football because it is NOT just about the headline “£xxxbn” taxpayer money tipped into the NHS but all the tampering and bad interventions that both sides are guilty of (and, of course, NHS management for day to day stuff)

Government doesn’t manage “the NHS” (maybe it did in 1948 when “the NHS” was founded) but the current “NHS management” (the term implies the NHS is a unitary body which of course it isn’t - hence the quotation marks) has responsibility for all the various day to day functions including training and staff safety issues. Just like Government doesn’t manage for example the day to day running of the military, or education and so on. What Government does do is provide the budget and put in place various things like the legal / regulatory / oversight / purchasing frameworks (this is not an exhaustive list and includes the general legislative framework such as employment laws etc) for all of these state activities. So if, say, a hospital does not meet the required standards then the appropriate oversight body eg the Care Quality Commission will at that point intervene (“special measures” and so on). Otherwise all the day to day stuff (recruitment, training, discipline etc) is the responsibility of the appropriate management structure. And that includes the response - or rather lack of response - to the Stonewall report. Lastly, you say: “Nothing really came from this YouGov survey because, as a society, we don't really take homophobia seriously. So often its excused as someone's religious beliefs or personal views. We have seen a massive rise in homophobic hate crime since the Brexit referendum and yet there has barely any noise about this, outside of the gay media“ which raises some interesting issues but, again, finding a way to deliver services and meet all these various challenges is the responsibility of “NHS management”.

car repair magazines?!

Thanks for the background. The inadequate staff training you received is a serious failure and my view of most online training is it is often a tick box exercise, a waste of time and done to save money. Sure, poorly delivered training by inexperienced / poor trainers is also a waste of time but that’s also an NHS management failure. And we live in a COVID world - but if COVID is becoming a permanent excuse to avoid returning to proper training by management vetted training companies then problems like this will never be addressed. So if nothing happened following the YouGov survey/report, that suggests the healthcare workers union failed / didn’t want to get involved, and also a serious failure by NHS management. All material issues in business risk reports (and staff safety is a material risk) should contain action plans and timescales agreed with individual managers (copied up the line-management chain), agreed actions to be followed up and verified, and all failures then reported to senior management for appropriate remedial response (senior management actions/responses are then also audited). This is all basic management stuff, so why doesn’t NHS management manage?

I’m genuinely puzzled Your blog, which I carefully read, is almost entirely about serious NHS failures identified in a report and also experienced by you. But now you say that you experience “no homophobia” at work in the NHS, rather there’s a problem with politicians “using prejudice and discrimination to give themselves power”. So why did you ask “How can we say we focus on person-centred care when LGBT staff’s safety is so bluntly ignored by the NHS?”

Multicultural Britain means multicultural beliefs and values, and without the support of all the cultures in the UK there would be no NHS. These are inescapable facts.

Tragic news! Titanic II has sunk …fortunately, this time, without loss of life https://youtu.be/cJvexrKjBII factoid #2 Titanic's incredible interior was lost when the ship sank 110 years ago in 1912. Right? Not quite. Parts of the interior still exist because one of Titanic's sister ships, Olympic, survived until 1935 and was fitted out in very similar style and some of its public “spaces” survive, including this first class lounge which was bought at auction (before the ship was scrapped) and then reconstructed at the Swan Hotel in Northumberland, England

Ah yes, I’ve just added a comment that clicking the links redirects them to a bogus address but these websites are still up there and the Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity is a legitimate university associated educational organisation and all these resources are freely available Which handily gives us another free bonus factoid - it’s available, but maybe “they” would rather it wasn’t…

Kids’ toys today are just so lame! Free bonus factoid!!! These links don’t work - when you click ‘em they get redirected to a “.gov” website that doesn’t exist, with this message: 404 - File or directory not found. The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. I guess it’s to stop curious kiddies learning all the interesting stuff that kids in the 1950s were encouraged to spend their time on - what with no iPhones and social media to keep them out of mischief… BUT you can view them simply copying and pasting the links direct into your browser address bar https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/toys/index.html https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/toys/gilbert-u-238-atomic-energy-lab.html https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/toys/atomic-energy-lab.html

Earlier this year a local collective appealed for donations from the surrounding communities (there have been many such appeals across the UK) of items needed, including medical supplies, tinned food, new bedding, torches and candles etc etc (those last ones got my attention… so that people could have some light at night-time) in order to help those who have lost so much, and continue to do so, in Ukraine the list of needed items had been compiled here by a local Polish community in contact with friends and relatives in Poland both for Ukrainians in Ukraine (citizens and soldiers) and those who had fled to Poland for refuge (mostly women, children and old folk) because (and many in the US may not be aware of this) Poland is the country where so many homeless, injured and traumatised Ukrainians have fled and where they have been accepted, welcomed, and given food, shelter, medical attention and comfort but Poland is not a country with unlimited wealth, hence the appeal when I arrived at the collection point there were volunteers from all different cultures, including many originally from Poland, helping to check donated items and sort them into different categories (medical, food etc) before loading onto a large truck transporting everything to Poland where it would be distributed to help those Ukrainians sheltering and being cared for in Poland and onward to Ukraine also I felt I should post this in the interests of balance, not to create further conflict - we have enough of that already here in Europe

think I’d draw the line at “spiked” shoes…

“The Lost Language Of Cranes, by David Leavitt” @Jkeeletupelo btw it’s not a wildlife book (or movie)

This TV interview with Blake Lemoine was posted today on YT (you may despise the TV channel but the interview is interesting and he comes across as a genuine guy). BL explains he reported his findings to Google senior management who clearly don’t seem to have a competent plan and transparent policies to deal with this, which is worrying considering they’re probably the biggest and most significant software company on the planet. One commenter posting to this BBC news report was not convinced by the honesty of LaMDA’s answers: “Just let me know when it starts lying and cheating, then we can elect it”

this blog gives useful advice on maximising your chances of finding what you’re looking for with long-lost stories https://mybookcave.com/how-to-find-a-book-when-you-dont-know-the-title-or-author/