"...shouted at the paramedics who helped her. The source added: “When she came to she started mouthing off and told the ambulance crew, ‘You have to respect my privacy’. She then told them to get out."

Although, blimey, reading that copy make my teeth hurt. 'pretty 19-year-old', 'raced to the scene', 'pal'. Seriously, does anyone ever refer to people as 'pal' these days?

So, is this story in the 'public interest' and if not why does the Sun have the right to breach patient confidentiality? Because no ambulance crew would go to the press about this - we have ethical standards.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is to unveil plans to shock young people who carry knives into a greater awareness of the impact of stabbing on victims.
Her proposals include visits to hospitals where people are being treated for knife wounds.

...Because, if you'd just been stabbed there is nothing more you would like to see than a gangster (possibly from the same gang who stabbed you) standing over your bed.

The thought that it will 'shock' young people into not running around stabbing each other is incredibly misguided. The reason people run around stabbing each other is because they are in gangs.

People are in gangs because of some well understood reasons, poverty and jealousy are the main things. We've always have poverty and we've always had gangs, it's just a lot more reported on these days.

A desire to call something 'theirs' is another reason why people get into gangs, to carve out a bit of the world that is theirs.

Look at the explosive popularity of Facebook and you see people separating into tribes.

With no external threats to safety these gangs turn on each other - Nothing unites Britain at the moment and so internal strife rises.

Gang members see the rich on TV all the time, the footballers, the actors, the politicians and they want what they have - but now the problem is that they don't want to work for it, TV like Big Brother has led to children, when asked what they want to be to answer "famous".

It might seem simplistic, but working around gangs and the things that they do, going into the sink estates on a daily basis, you get a feel for what the causes are. Everyone wants to be special, everyone wants to 'belong, and because they aren't special, or because they feel alienated, some people turn to tribalism and crime.

I was talking to a police officer about a particularly nasty piece of work the other day, he couldn't understand why some people in poverty turn to crime while the majority of people don't. And if he doesn't know, I'm damn sure the politicians don't either.

Young people today are invulnerable, they have never been disciplined effectively so they think that nothing can touch them. When I see the police arresting someone, all I can hear is the suspect shouting, "You can't arrest me!". The response to a teacher disciplining a pupil is almost always, "I know my rights". No-one has ever told these children "No". Parents don't chastise their children when they misbehave in the supermarket, so why would they discipline them for other things at home.

We are reaping what we have sowed in becoming a more permissive society in the 70's, 80's and 90's. You have to ask yourself if the cost to society for our permissiveness is too much.

That's what you have to treat, not the symptom, the knives, but the causes. You don't treat meningitis by trying to get rid of the rash, you treat it by getting rid of the infection.

But of course, that isn't an easy and quick fix, and it goes a lot deeper than the politicians would like to admit.

Look at the perpetrators and victims of knife killings, most of them are black youngsters - is this a coincidence? By saying that people can be 'shocked' out of carrying a knife they must be saying that black people don't normally think of their victims and this is how to 'uplift' them into changing. This, of course, is utter drivel.

Human beings have been killing each other for years, why should we suddenly stop? Have our brains evolved overnight to find killing abhorrent? I would suggest not, we are no different than we were 1000 years ago, or even 70 years ago.

But of course, politics is all about 'quick fixes', and I foresee new and 'improved' laws to deal with this surge in knife crimes. It won't fix anything and the crimes will eventually fall out of the media's gaze and turn to something else. The killings will go on, but less people will be interested and it will fade, once more, into the background.

Until then I'm guessing that we will have to endure more rapid and ill thought out legislation, and no increase in the infrastructure to enforce it.

Normal service will be resumed.

---

Please excuse this post, it's a stream of consciousness thing and I really should have tidied it up, and had some sort of point, before posting it. Oh, and has anyone ever noticed how short the paragraphs are on the BBC News website?

A hospital has admitted clamping ambulances for parking infringements and charging £50 for their release.
Security staff at King's College Hospital, south London, are clamping the non-emergency ambulances for spending too long in drop-off bays.

These ambulances are privately run ambulances who took up the contracts for patient transport. This is something that the LAS used to do in London, but then with the sneaking privatisation of the NHS the private companies started to do things cheaper and so the LAS lost a lot of these contracts.

They have, as far as I know, no exemptions to where they can park (unlike us proper emergency ambulances).

I'm not quite sure how "They clamp ambulances parked for more than an hour "to allow other vehicles into the area," works though, surely if they are clamped then they are still blocking the area?

I don't know, I'm an ambulance driver, not an ambulance parker. And if you've ever seen me park, that much is pretty obvious.

A woman has said she was left in agony when an ambulance took three hours to respond to a 999 call after a fall.
A spokesperson for East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) said: "We don't have sufficient time to look into the detail to respond to this."
"EMAS is a 24/7 service. We answer 500,000 emergency calls per annum and that's our priority."

(My emphasis)

Wow...

I never thought I'd hear an ambulance service say this. I guess that the person on the other end of the phone to the reporter was having a really bad day.

I wonder if this means I can get away with telling a patient that, "I don't have time to deal with your cut finger".

(My back of a fag packet numbers for London is that we have over 1.2 million calls a year, I'm sure the official figures are out there someone but I can't be bothered to look them up. I'm working in a few hours and yes, I know we have more ambulances than EMAS).

Ambulance 'loses way' to hospital
Ambulance drivers are to get additional training after a vehicle got lost as it was taking a woman to hospital, who later died.In a statement East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) said: "During the journey... the ambulance satellite navigation system failed and the driver, who usually operates in the Skegness area, took a wrong turn.
"This was realised and the crew member in the rear of the vehicle, who was familiar with the area, was able to direct the driver back on course.

I rely on the Sat-nav system on my ambulance - not so much if I'm working in my area, but if I'm elsewhere in London then I'm like a fish out of water.

Strange hospitals are the worst as I keep circling the area trying to find the A&E department.

If I do a transfer to a hospital outside of East London, there is then a big chance that I'll get another job in the area. I don't have 'the knowledge' so end up following the sat-nav or relying on one of our mapbooks.

This is a tragedy, but despite this it is a bit of a non-story in my opinion, someone from outside of the area took a wrong turn, it was corrected and they found the hospital. That the father of the patient reached the hospital 15 minutes earlier isn't unusual - I'm often beaten to hospital by relatives 'following' in the car, partly because we do various things before we leave the scene and partly because I don't drive like a loon with a patient in the back. Ambulances have different handling to cars and so we'll often drive slower.

If someone could tell me how 'better trained' can be implemented in order to make sure that when driving in an unusual area with a failed navigation system the driver never takes a wrong turn I'm sure every service in the country would be grateful.

And yes, I've taken a wrong turn or two myself and had to rely on the experience and knowledge of my partner to help me out, and I've done the same for people who have worked with me. It's why a good ambulance crew is a team.

And not being able to find a place can be one of the worse things that happens to you - as this example from the archives shows.

I got a job, '14 month child, floppy and lifeless'.
The address was given as 'Flat 1, Rose house, Starling road'.
I sped up and down the road. I spotted some of the names of the flats in tiny writing, on little blue plaques many of them pointing away from the road. My pulse started to rise. It had taken me four minutes to reach the area, but how much longer would it take me to locate the potentially very sick child?
I found 'Lilac House', 'Lily House' and 'Tulip House', but I couldn't find 'Rose House'.
Now I was starting to panic.

Something said by someone wiser than me* on Twitter today was 'Funny how the term 'socialized medicine' moves the base line. US is the exception, we have healthcare, they have have privatized healthcare'

Then I see this terrible story.

City hospital officials said they were shocked by surveillance footage showing a woman falling from her chair, writhing on the floor and dying as workers failed to help for more than an hour.

...The suit was especially critical of the hospital's emergency ward, saying it is so poorly staffed that patients are often marooned there for days while they wait to be evaluated.

While I may well moan about the state of the NHS, I still think that it was a brilliant idea and that it still does a fine job under difficult circumstances.

I think that this story should be printed on the wall of every A&E department in the country in order to point it out to patients who complain about waiting four hours for their sore knee problems.

*I've been in the same room as him twice, yet never had the chance to go and talk to him. Third time is the charm.