You can see me speaking 24 minutes in here. Can’t work out how to embed this one. It was literally freezing and the very small crowd was understandable. I think four hour rallies outdoors in Scotland in midwinter are somewhat optimistic. I think we also need to face that the high excitement of the referendum campaign, where you could just put something out on Facebook and 10,000 people would show up, is behind us. What we have now is a period of hard graft towards the general election.
I think what I say in this short speech will give comfort to those in the SNP who blocked me as a candidate, because as usual I am joyfully off message. Shortly after me there is an amazing speech from Tommy Sheridan; his physical voice projection alone is astonishing! It was bouncing back off Salisbury Crags and Holyrood Palace.
This really is under 100 yards from where we live. That view of Salisbury Crags is what I see every time I look out the window. The balcony will be great once it gets a bit warmer.
Rob, I noticed you saying you couldn’t access your blog. I just tried to visit, and it looks like your domain has been, er, somehow taken out of your control. Do you know what has happened? Did your domain name registration lapse or something:
Who was your domain name registered with, and when did you register it?
Rob, I’m glad to see that your site is back up.
I’ve been reading your article “20,000 Isotopes Under the Sea”:
http://www.spiderbomb.com/blog/?p=2557
Yes, this needs to be publicised, and practical measures need to be taken as well. The following section has given me an idea about that:
Diverting the flow of groundwater before it reaches the meltdown site is a practical possibility.
On the matter of publicity, the title of that article could be much better, there are no good terms in it for search engines to find. I’m busy today but I intend to prioritise this matter.
Sorry I dropped out Clark and RobG. The more links I picked up in my searches the more agitato I became esp reading of the dangers to healthy organs and tissue from Iodine 131 which I am about to ingest within the next month or two.
Clark, my domain was registered in early 2000; with regard to recent stuff, its on automatic renewal on a bank card that has plenty of money on it; For some reason the automatic renewal did not go through, and for some reason I was unable to access my account on the domain registrar; Anyhows, now sorted, and you might notice Im now using a different ancient laptop whose keyboard doesnt work correctly; Heck, Ive now got an excuse for typos!
Mary, I would be really interested to hear how your treatment goes; Ive more than stated my position on all things nuclear in this thread, so I wont come at anything you say from that angle; Im more interested in the real, human aspect of it, which rarely gets reported;
(My Kingdom for a fullstop key that works!)
Mary, thyroid treatment is one of the most effective cancer treatments, specifically because the thyroid takes up iodine, so it takes up the radioactive iodine which kills the cancer cells. I think it’s the only form of cancer that can be targeted with such accuracy. Five year survival rates are given as better than 97%, and thirty year rates at better than 90%. The Chernobyl disaster caused some four thousand cases of thyroid cancer, but over 98% of them were successfully treated. The official figures are that only fifteen had died from this cause by 2011.
It is ironic; it was probably radioactive iodine from nuclear pollution, possibly even from Fukushima, that caused the cancer in the first place. The treatment uses a much higher dose of very pure I-131 which reliably kills cells including the cancerous ones, rather than leaving cells alive but mutated and thus possibly cancerous.
Mary, I wish you strength and confidence; the successful treatment rate does look extremely high. I wish you the very best with the treatment and do please keep us informed.
Rob, I’m away from home at present, I joined Phil on the London housing protest, so I won’t write much tonight. Please do look through my comments above; there really are some rays of hope, but we need to share information and develop our skills to help make them real. I’m asking you to engage so that we can do things that could actually achieve tangible improvements. Craig already has made a difference more than once; he, and what I have learned at this blog, are my inspiration.
How old is this laptop and what are you running on it? Does the Mac have software problems? Macs can run free GPL software; you don’t even need to install it, it’ll run from a DVD or a USB stick. Were you aware of this?
And Rob, I do want you to answer my questions. And I want you to argue with me – but with proper evidence. I won’t put up with “I say it’s all disaster and they keep everything secret anyway”; that’s just not good enough, it’s defeatist and lazy. Even if it really is that bad, it is still our moral responsibility to do our best, to try.
Isn’t that right Mary?
Bump! to keep this thread open…
I have just come back to this thread and wish to thank you Clark for the info. I saw the oncologist on 19th February and he is now putting me forward for the ablation. Up to now, I would have been at risk in isolation because of my breathing problems and episodes of choking/stridor. Also the staff could not be put at risk because of the radioactivity levels.
As the problems have settled and although I sound like a wheezy old thing especially on any exertion, he reckons I will be OK. This will happen in a month or so. Before the ablation I will have an injection of Thyrogene on the ward for two days running, go on a low iodine diet, and come off Thyroxine. I look forward to the completion of the treatment.
Thanks again. Take care yourself. This blog can be stressful!
PS I have just received a copy of the oncologist’s letter to the ENT surgeon following that appointment. He very kindly copies me in as well as the GP. OUR NHS is to be treasured.
Today I have been reading:
What’s happening to my local GP? Carrots, sticks, and the long game of NHS privatisation
Bob Gill 24 February 2015.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/bob-gill/what%E2%80%99s-happening-to-my-local-gp-carrots-sticks-and-long-game-of-nhs-privatisation
The author is a Kent GP.
and in America the insurers are doing well. 1,300 of them! I expect that you knew that the new head of NHS England, Simon Stevens, came from a 10 year stint in the US health set up.
March 02, 2015
A Diagnosis
Five Years In – How’s the Affordable Care Act Doing?http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/02/five-years-in-hows-the-affordable-care-act-doing/
Mary, thanks for the update. Yes, without isolating each patient, the staff would suffer cumulative doses of radioactivity. How long will you have to be isolated for? Can you have Internet access for the duration?
Mary, the rolling privatisation of the NHS appals me. My dear old Dad and all he worked for. He’d be so mad at the current plans. It was bad enough in his time. He was an administrator; a hospital treasurer for many years, and then a district finance officer. At one time he went to see a treasurer at another hospital and was told he’d gone to the boiler room. So Dad went down there caught him feeding the hospital’s accounts into the boiler firebox! I think Dad called for an audit and the other treasurer went to prison for a while.
But hospital accounts were fairly centralised then. With privatisation there will be all those other companies to keep watch on, too.
Yes, it has been very stressful for a while here at Craig’s. I disagree with Resident Dissident about many things, but John Goss’s approach of just accusing him of “supporting fascists” really doesn’t do any good. It doesn’t expose the issues, and it doesn’t test the evidence. And it leaves the Russian opposition, the peace campaigners, out on their own and robs them of exposure. Corrupt rulers everywhere, not just on the “Western” side of things. Power corrupts.
Did you see these excuses for Wikipedia pages?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Medical_Aspects_of_Radiation_in_the_Environment#CERRIE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Radiological_Protection_Board
That act is the one that relieved the NHS from its universal duty of care, isn’t it?
Mary, I hope you can stay on-line in the isolation suite. I wish you the very Best with the treatment, and do please keep us informed.
Four joyous days in the pod are scheduled in mid April, followed by a whole body scan in the Nuclear Medicine dept where I was once employed. How weird is that?
Mary, how long since you worked there? Is there anyone you worked with still in the department? I’m just interested, and if you’d rather not say I won’t mind. But if you would like to chat about it, I’d be interested to learn of any of the procedures in the department, like protection measures, handling isotopes, different radiation sources, how they were kept, how often they needed to be replaced, even how they were delivered, etc. Nuclear tech is a bit of a mystery to the general public and I consider your experiences valuable.
Did you find out if you could get on-line in the ‘pod’? If you need a disposable laptop I could dig one out for you. I’ve got so much old computer hardware I don’t even know how I’m going to get rid of it all; the local recycling centre claim it’s “trade waste” if I take too much at once, but its all just kit that other people have discarded.
Mary, thanks for the link to the OpenDemocracy article about GPs, which is very informative.