Booked my car in for service and MOT. NINE reminders later and I told them if they do that again I’m going elsewhere. And I’m still on that park bench shouting at the pigeons 🐦 as well 😂

The story of the Paper Boat. A British Geriatric Society blog from 2018. Let me know if you’d like the full text & I’ll send it to you.

The story of the Paper Boat was a blog I wrote back in 2018 for @gerisoc.bsky.social.

It was an analogy that I found useful to explain to patients and families how difficult it can be to predict the future accurately.

Now as I and my friends get older, I find myself sharing it once again.

🧵1/n

Recent trip to St Helens and Wigan

Just watched the monstrous RFK in front of the Senate Finance Committee claiming he is ‘taking the politics out of science’ whilst doing the precise opposite.
My God, the suffering and death that appalling man is wreaking.

My letter in today’s Times newspaper…

😂 We’re all slowly turning into Victor Meldrew, Alf. In no time at all you’ll be like me - sitting on a park bench swearing at the pigeons 😉

Now tagging Bea herself! @drelvey.bsky.social

A lot of blue sky. Happy Wednesday.

How can Labour possibly get to the stage where they get something like this so very wrong? Are they not getting good advice or don’t they listen to it?

My father spent his final 3 years in an Elderly Mentally Infirm home. The care staff were from Uganda and worked impressively as a team. Dad received truly excellent care which retained his dignity and love of life despite worsening dementia. They came to his funeral, sang beautifully, hugged us. 😢

Madness is mild! I’ve a relative in a Care Home. I’d say 25% of the staff are recently arrived from overseas and they’re lovely and here. Whereas recruiting locally drew a blank. It’s frightening to think where we will be by the time / if we need care. We already know the NHS locally is 🥵😬

How the US president and his clan ushered in a new golden age of corruption | The Observer The presidency and personal gain now go hand in hand – and no one has been able to do anything about it

observer.co.uk/news/interna...
Awful. How on earth was this allowed to happen? It feels like those of us who have spent their careers in public service are being made fools of. And it’s dangerous for democracy.

As the news report that US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth had a second signal chat in which he shared detailed military plans with his family

One wonders if he was inspired by Mission Gainsborough from this episode of Blackadder Goes Forth 👀

Have you ever seen anything like that? (Masters golf. Rory McIlroy. Grand slam at the 11th attempt. One of the greatest sporting days ever).

Nat west lost my mother’s death certificate. Awful experiences with aunt’s Coop account recently. Now call them “The Uncooperative Bank”. 12 years for us with the HSBC and faultless.

Totally. Until and unless guidelines and pathways are explicitly populated with decision points and choices, SDM is arguably a bit of a losing battle.

Once you start looking, it’s tramlines not guidelines everywhere. Inexorably leads to overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

We love our US friends to bits. But one or two of your people worry us greatly. And piling on to Zelensky in the Oval Office was unforgivable. So we do what we can to be on the right side of history. Hope there will soon be a time when we come back together. 😢

Agree. But also failure demand eats up capacity. Multiple, delayed appointments when one on time perfectly possible, and then delays mean the patient has to hassle admin staff. Or stuff that a GP could / would have done in surgery now referred because overwhelmed with other demands.

My experience too. Finding out the patients ideas concerns and expectations is consultation skills 101. But the checklist is all that counts. Population level medicine treating everyone the same, rather than properly looking after the individual patient. I’m no longer disappointed. I’m cross.

Exclusive: AI chatbots echo Russian disinformation, report warns Bots from Microsoft, Google, OpenAI and others spew falsehoods.

"By flooding search results and web crawlers with pro-Kremlin falsehoods, the network is distorting how large language models process and present news and information”
www.axios.com/2025/03/06/e...

I see tomorrow is Friday.

Is Friday going a tariff day, or a some-tariffs day, or a no-tariffs day?

Or will it be some other kind of day, like an annex-Greenland day, or a Hannibal-Lecter-wants-to-have-you-for-dinner day, or an Arnold-Palmer-size day, or something else?

I just can’t keep track.

US cuts off intelligence sharing with Ukraine, FT reports The United States has cut off intelligence-sharing with Kyiv in a move that could seriously hamper the Ukrainian military's ability to target Russian forces, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing officials familiar with the matter.

Absolutely shameful, utterly unforgivable

www.reuters.com/world/us-cut...

We’re visiting Canada instead of the planned trip to the US this year. All investments in US companies being sold tomorrow.

I taught my dog to play the trumpet on the London Underground.

We went from Barking to Tooting in less than an hour.

#dadjokes

Zelensky’s refusal to bow to Trump was a big factor in Trumps first impeachment. Why is mainstream media not talking about this?

Love Actually - Prime Minister's speech YouTube video by Danilo Balu

youtu.be/D6ouyeycWk8?...
It is time for this….