The server problems that have plagued the Bloggies have been resolved, so now would be a good time to go there and vote for your favourite sites. Feel free to vote for whomever you like (at least in the categories that I'm not mentioned in...). There are some great sites mentioned, and in a lot of the sections I was torn which way to vote.

All I can say about the people in the 'Tagline' category, is that you shouldn't vote for Scaryduck, if only because he regularly makes me soil myself with laughter - and I don't think that increasing my laundry workload should be rewarded.

Oh, and can I just say that Jane Perrone is a very nice person, she was the first person to interview me.

Joey made me very welcome in Canada last year - and was also one of the reasons why I got into this blogging lark in the first place.

And my final 'for consideration' should go to Real E Fun, who is just a bloody excellent writer, and shows me up for the hack that I am.

Don't ask me who to vote for in the 'Best British or Irish Weblog'. I don't know myself.

Mum, get Brother to show you how to vote...

For those that are interested, I've joined the team at Heardsaid. It's a blog that contains little posts that are like one-two punches. Things that we have heard that are probably true, never proven, but always interesting.

...They could literally be about anything or anyone but the really compelling and dangerous aspect is that corroboration isn't necessary. We'll present this stuff just as we heard it and it's up to the reader to decide whether it's true or not. The only basic rule is that we can't just make things up ourselves and that generally there isn't a structure. That's what encyclopedias are for -- its chatty and conversational -- like a personal weblog about answering questions which haven't been asked yet.

This reminds me, I need to write more for Lingual Nerve (the other writers are much better than me).

I also need to work out how to get paid for all this writing...

There is an excellent little article over at the Guardian here.

Sandra Laville
Monday December 20, 2004
The Guardian

As an icy wind blew in a flurry of snow, broken and discarded umbrellas rolled down St Mary Street like tumbleweed. In a doorway of the Walkabout bar, six Santas, four angels and an Elvis Presley huddled together to shelter from the cold.
From inside his Mercedes van, Mike Loveless watched as a man stumbled towards him, his white shirt soaked in blood, dripping from his smashed up nose.

A few metres away another young man, his shirt sleeves also stained blood red, slumped against a parked car and punched uselessly at the keyboard of his mobile phone.

All around others staggered; dazed and confused, some crying and bloodied, like survivors in the aftermath of a disaster. But there had been no bomb, no train crash or motorway pile up. This was the fallout from the last Saturday night before Christmas when hundreds of young men and women, their flimsy tops no barrier to the freezing temperatures, swarmed from bar to club to bar in search of pleasure.

Parked on a strip of Cardiff city centre known as "animal farm", Mr Loveless, a paramedic with 18 years experience, had the unenviable task of picking up the pieces.

In a pilot scheme running in south Wales, Mr Loveless spends his 10pm to 4am shift at the heart of the Christmas revelry answering 999 calls to leave the main fleet of ambulances free to answer serious incidents elsewhere.

He assesses the patients at the scene, carries out treatment and, if necessary, sends them to hospital in a non-emergency back-up ambulance.

As part of the Christmas crackdown on anti-social behaviour, Mr Loveless works with police officers who roam the streets of the city centre. They call on his medical skills when needed, and in turn go to his aid if the crowd becomes hostile.

"I am linked into the police radio for security," said Mr Loveless. "There are a lot more people carrying weapons these days. A lot feeling they have nothing to lose, all drink and drugs fuelled.

"I've had my arm broken and I've been given a black eye in this job, so I am in constant touch with the officers."

The night is still in its infancy when the radio crackles to life with a 999 call to the Old Borough pub, where a young woman has fallen head first down some steps. A group of young women, fuelled by the festive offer of any three bottles for £5, chants: "Get your kit off for the girls."

It takes half an hour to check the young woman over, lay her on a spinal board and lift her up the stairs and into a waiting ambulance to be ferried to hospital.

Moments later a call for assistance at Edwards bar comes in from the police - "male assault victim hyperventilating".

At the scene, two girls dressed as Christmas tree angels weep and hover over a young man, lying flat on his back on a bench, his face a mess of blood. As the casualty is put into the back-up ambulance for treatment, a teenage boy runs across the street screaming and sobbing to the paramedic: "Pentwyn, pentwyn, pentwyn, I need to get to Pentwyn, please I only got a £1, please."

"Listen mate, I'm not a taxi service okay. Go away or I'll call the police," Mr Loveless responds. "You have to be a bit assertive with them sometimes," he says. "Because otherwise it is like the lunatics running the asylum."

Throughout the night the rapid response van races up and down the street and its offshoots, where every second building is a late night bar, dealing with everything from intoxicated, weeping girls who have fallen off their high-heeled shoes to testosterone-fuelled men with bloody faces, suspected heart attacks and broken legs, and female victims of assault, like Sophie.

Her Christmas celebrations came to an end when a man in The Yard bar punched her in the face, splitting her cheek and plumping her eye out in a black, blue and red mess.

"I've never in my life had a mark on my face, oh my God, look at me, my mum is going to kill me," weeps the 20-year-old, before being ferried away to the University College hospital, Wales.

As night becomes early morning the response team flies from one call to another.

As Mr Loveless treats his patients, around him more police pour into the street, blue sirens flash the length of the road, a fire engine adds its wail to the mayhem and the ambulance control sends a message over the radio to all crews: "A lot of fighting going on in the city centre, it's very dangerous, be careful."

"Merry Christmas to you all," shouts a reveller as the response van pulls up to a ruck outside the Chip Shop.

A well dressed businessman, out with his wife, slips and spills curry sauce over the T-shirt of another man. "He just went for him.

"He went ballistic, and headbutted him," said the businessman's wife.

Then there is the 20-year-old subject of three 999 calls; one over a broken leg which turns out to be a grazed knee, another for an assault and the third when she collapses shivering and drunk in the street.

"I've had enough of this," said the paramedic, sending her to hospital.

Heading back to police HQ at 4am - after answering 21 calls and treating nearly double the number of patients - he adds: "Roll on New Year's Eve."


I'm working Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day 18:00-01:00 on overtime and 07:00-19:00 on New Years Eve and New Years Day. Nothing to do with the extra money at all...

It just goes to show that some people can survive a hell of a lot, being shot, falling 5 floors and nearly being cremated. Value judgments about whether he should have lived or not are welcome.

Once again, from the unsurpassed Boing Boing

A very funny article here commenting on the fire in Leyton that destroyed a load of "art".

I've also added a "Recipric-roll" for people who link to me, but I don't necessarily read every day - If you link to me and I've missed you out then feel free to let me know.

I'm working tonight - Friday night, start of a Bank holiday, plenty of pubs (if only the weather was warmer I'd have nothing to do all night but pick up drunks). Today is a "Stat" day, which means that I earn more money for working tonight - I'm going to guess that there will be a lot of ambulances on the road tonight as everyone grabs for that extra overtime. So I'm hoping it'll be an easy night.

I'll let you know.

Yes, yes I know I keep harping on about the state of psychiatric services in this country, but the fact that this mental health patient murdered and dismembered someone shows you what I worry about. This patient was discharged from Newham General and the investigation is going to look at how he came to be released. I suspect he was diagnosed with "personality disorder" which is untreatable with medication - and so the patient is discharged.

When I was an A+E nurse I had to spend all night trying to get a violent patient Sectioned (detained for psychiatric assessment without the patients consent) The social worker was extremely reluctant to do this, and I only managed to convince her when I explained that at 8 o'clock when security left, the patient would be free to leave the hospital - and it would be her face on the front of the tabloids when he killed someone.

He was sectioned 10 minutes later.

MI5 has been expanded to meet terror threat. This news is being reported as a good thing. For those not in the know MI5 is charged with maintaining security at home.
Pardon my Tin-foil-hat paranoia, but if we were told that the KGB were being expanded would we be so happy? The increase is due to an "increased terrorist threat" which seems to be wheeled out everytime a government does something like this. Anyone would think that Irish bombs had never terrorised us.

A sixteen year old boy was killed in broad daylight. Apparently he was involved in a fight between two gangs of youths; there are a lot of gangs in Newham and as far as I can tell they are fairly nebulous things. Having had my ambulance kicked and punched by a gang (luckily while I wasn't in it) I can easily see how the violence had escalated. Sympathies to the family; how do you keep your teenage sons inside during daylight hours?
When I next work out of Newham, I'll no doubt hear the full story, I suspect the police won't have many witnesses to the murder itself.

Baghdad Burning tells us that the Governing Council of Iraq (you know...the people who are all trying to carve out their own little piece of the country) are to introduce Shari'a (Islamic) law. This wouldn't be so bad if the men who run the religion could agree on the issues. Islam has always been for womens rights, yet it is the interpretation of the Quran, by men, that leads to oppression.
While Iraq had a secular government women had equal rights...now it looks like it's all going to change for the worse. Go read the link, and see how the Americans have "freed" the Iraqi people.