What A Wormful World

What a President! Not Obama, or Clinton, but good old Jimmy Carter. He's got the job done, accomplished what he said he would. He's helped eradicate Guinea worm and that really is a Big Deal.
Not impressed? What's one little worm, after all? What if I tell you that this worm is ingested in dirty drinking water, It grows to a metre in length and then makes it's way out through the skin, often the foot, which gets so painful that people soak it in water to ease it. Out comes the monster and lays again.
Jimmy first saw it many years ago when he went over to a handsome African woman nursing a baby to say friendly hello to her child - and realised it was not a baby at all but a disgusting worm emerging from her nipple. Her nipple! She went on to have another 25 worms.
Jimmy decided to get rid of Guinea worm once and for all. He helped dig wells so that the water became clean. Now there were only 126 cases at last count, down from thousands each year.
Well done Jimmy - but thumbs down to God for creating such a creature in the first place. He sure has a warped sense of humour

Save Our Surgeons

What does it feel like to  squeeze a teenager's heart in your bloodied hands, focused, determined, willing it to beat and then watching the life slip away?

Surgeon Ton Konig did just that in a speeding ambulance, ripping open a chest while trying to save a 17-year-old stab victim. He failed - and that failure will live with him forever. He will never, ever be able to forget it.

What do we ask of our medics? A nurse on last night's Panorama told of the moment he almost walked out into the night during a hectic shift, physically and emotionally unable to take any more. These are human beings, pushed to the edge of endurance by what we ask of them.

Time to take control. Stop asking for miracles and start taking much better care of ourselves. Stop wasting their time with silly, trivial stuff that could be sorted with a paracetemol and a plaster.

Above all, put the knives down. leave all that cutting to the people who do it best - those brilliant, but badly-treated surgeons.

British Kids Abandoned

We care for kids abroad and abandon those on our doorstep. It is a tragedy that we allow Welsh schoolchildren to be so badly treated. No pupils - that's right, none at all - are getting an A* in English in  a quarter of Welsh schools.

How has it come to this? A whole generation getting a crap edcucation, ranked among the worst in the world. I blame the teachers. We have two in this house, so I'm well aware of the poressures, but the teaching in Wales is abysmal.

They are failing so badly and nobody does anything. One reason is the Welsh language. A good English teacher wanting to work in Wales has to be able to speak Welsh. Who could be bothered?

So the brightest and best of a nation are missing out. Doomed to a life of failure and lack of opportunity. Labour is in charge in Wales. Ed should get his stupid head around what his useless party has done and then hang it in shame.