A quick listing of things that might not warrant a full blogpost, but have been clogging up my 'I really must post about this' file.

Adrian Sudbury is dying, in his final weeks of life he is petitioning the government to improve education about bone marrow donation, as there are still a lot of myths about the process - if you live in the UK please do sign his petition. It's a bit of common sense legislation that works in other countries.

'Jeremy Clarkson has been criticised for claiming he drove at 186mph on a public road, by a father whose son died when a speeding car crashed into his vehicle...
...When asked about driving the supercar, Clarkson, who lives in Chipping Norton, said: "I got a great speeding ticket. I think it was 186 in the Limehouse Link.'

I love Top Gear and I have no problem with the presenters doing daft things on the telly, but 186 m.p.h. through the Limehouse link tunnel is utterly moronic. If this is true (and let's face it, he was probably willy-waving) then I'd suggest that this was 'dangerous driving' and perhaps worthy of a driving ban. The Limehouse link tunnel is in my patch and I remember, before the speed cameras were fitted, having fatal R.T.A's there seemingly every other week.

Boing Boing recently had a post on a 'Right to Die' card. I hope that Salford council have liaised with the emergency services because if someone waved a bit of card at me while I was about to start doing CPR on a recently dead person it wouldn't mean a thing to me. Our rules for not starting resuscitation on a patient are strict for a reason - to prevent mistakes that could quite literally cause someone to lose their life.

Saying that, there may well be a point in my life when I have DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) tattooed on my chest.

In a related story here is a tale of a movement to recognise that sometimes it's best not to be over aggressive with the treatment of disease. We can't all live forever, but for some people it seems like a goal to aim for regardless of the consequences of the treatment.

I'm not too sure how it would translate in the NHS - dealing with decisions in a privatised health service raises some very different questions than in the socialised medicine of the UK. How much does treatment cost factor into things? Would a poor person choose to die rather than saddle their relatives with debt for instance?

But ultimately, if you are hoping for a dignified death keep your fingers crossed because it so seldom happens, it's definitely not the 'important life journey' that certain groups would have you believe.

'Incidents of violence and aggression against drivers of one-person rapid response ambulance vehicles are not recorded separately by the Scottish Ambulance Service'

Shame, because that's exactly the sort of information we should have before moving ahead with the 'Front end model', that has a lot more ambulance staff on solo responder cars - and therefore probably at increased risk of being seriously hurt. One day a solo responder will be killed and I can predict that the service involved will say, "lessons have been learned".

By the way, I adore They Work For You watchlists...

A good idea to use 'Telehealth' to keep an eye on our ageing population. One of the trial areas is on my patch. Unfortunately the report itself is written in a really childish fashion. I suppose that it's alright to insult the elderly, here's hoping they do the same to those rascally Jews next...

Peter Canning writes about something that all us folks in the emergency services occasionally worry about. Recently one of our FRU drivers was involved in a crash (thankfully no-one was seriously hurt) and only the other month some... person drove into the back of our ambulance while we were on lights and sirens. Under pressure to hit the ORCON targets some people are going to drive too fast to get to a job (which is probably just someone with an ingrowing toenail anyway). Thankfully our managers are too smart to tell us to drive faster as I think they know exactly what answer they would get...

Here is another fear that us ambulance types have - being falsely accused of sexual misconduct. You will notice that his ambulance service took the brave step of supporting him by firing him even after he was found not guilty in a court of law. Unfortunately it wouldn't surprise me if the UK services didn't take a similar tack. I hope that Mr. Howes has some good luck with his arbitration.

I know that this is something that I'm very scared off - it only takes one drunk, drugged or mentally unstable patient making an accusation to have you suddenly out of a job.

It's one of the many reasons why I like having a female crewmate.

Some nice news now. Inspector Gadget will have a book out soon. His is a top blog and I wish him all the best with it. He is on my list of 'fellow bloggers who I'd like to buy a pint, but are likely to want to remain anonymous'.

On Thursday I'll be entering all the information from my 'holiday wiki' into Google Earth and making some decisions on where I'm going and what I'll be doing, feel free to edit it until then. Afterwards I'll have to make a decision what to do with it, the smart money is on me tidying it up and leaving it as a permanent resource.

I think that's everything - lots of these came from people sending me links, something I'm always happy to receive so do keep sending them to me at the usual address.