First off, apologies for the lack of blogging, but I've been working a 60 hour week, coupled with a two day conference and other stuff (including being contacted a lot about Nightjack - about which I appeared on Channel 4 news, but which I, myself, missed.)

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I was woken from my sleep by a text message from a friend telling me that I was in the News of the World. As far as I know the publishers hadn't planned anything with them so it was a bit of a surprise.

He sent me this picture of the article.

I was somewhat perturbed. Actually I was flaming furious. You see, despite the mistakes, it also implies other things.

For comparison you can read the original post here.

Firstly, I didn't say anything, I wrote it. Over three years ago. Hardly news. I'm also not based at the Royal London hospital - we have these things we call ambulance stations. And they get the name of the book wrong. So far not exactly quality reporting.

(And why I do have more than one blog, I think they are mixing up 'blogs' and 'posts', which while annoying is perhaps a little petty to bring up)

The ambulance arrived and took the baby to hospital (sorry 'brain bug tot'), the baby didn't travel in the neighbour's car at all.

The implication is that the baby definitely had meningitis (which it didn't) where in the actual article I try to show that it isn't meningitis. Also things have changed for the better and FRUs are waiting on scene for long times a lot less often than when I did it.

I would guess that the News of the World got hold of a copy of my book - reached page four (where this story is printed) and got no further because they smelled something they could get outraged about. Rather than, say, doing some work and seeing how busy the ambulances were that day (three years ago).

While I've never expected quality journalism from the redtops, it still surprised me how easily they twisted the facts to say what they wanted to say, while getting even the basics wrong.

The sad thing is that this sort of coverage will probably make my bosses look a little less favourably upon me, even though I had nothing to do with the paper printing it, or with putting their own spin on things.

Notes on the Nightjack verdict, written in haste, in anger, and unedited (because I'm knackered and I have no time to do it justice. My apologies - I think I made more sense when speaking to a Guardian journalist about it)

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When I started writing this blog I made some effort at remaining anonymous, it wasn't a big effort mind you, but it involved writing under a pseudonym and not shouting about it in the messroom. When my real name was found out I discovered that I was very lucky, that the communications department of the LAS didn't want to come gunning for my job.

There are laws that protect you should you wish to 'whistleblow', if someone is doing something illegal or immoral then you can be protected if you brig it to someone else's attention. Of course, in the real world, that 'protection' is only as good as the lawyers you can hire to fight for those protections.

A lot of what bloggers bring to light is the chronic state of the their day to day life - a classic example would be police bloggers letting us know about how much administration that they must fill in whenever they make an arrest. Part of what I write about is to highlight the flaws in the governmental running of the NHS. Other bloggers do this more than me.

What bloggers do is humanise and explain their section of the world - public sector bodies do well to have bloggers writing within them, after all these are the people who care about what they do, about what improvements should be made and about where the faults come from. They highlight these things in the hopes that, in bringing this information into the public consciousness, they can effect a change that they would otherwise be powerless to bring about.

Anonymity provides a protection against vindictiveness from management who would rather do nothing than repeat the party-line, or lie, that everything is perfect, there is no cause for concern. Having seen management do, essentially illegal things, in order to persecute and victimise staff - anonymity is a way of protecting your mortgage payments.

It is not just for bloggers this protection of anonymity - consider a support forum for people with mental health problems, anonymity allows these user to perhaps be more open, more honest and more themselves then they would do were they forced to reveal their own identities. It is the nature of the internet that our identities are fluid.

Perhaps that can be the Times next 'scoop', tracking down the people behind anonymous forums in the cause of 'public interest'.

Journalists work to protect their sources, some ending up in prison over their refusal to breach the privacy of their sources. This is right and proper.

So - when Judge Eady told the Times that they could breach the privacy of the police blogger Nightjack, it has lead to a very real fear of what this means for the rest of us.

The thought that Nightjack breached laws on writing about criminal cases (when the details are all in the public domain post-trial) seems petty, and if he did indeed compromise trials then why is his force only giving him a written warning rather than prosecuting him?

I won't dwell on the 'public interest' of unveiling bloggers, they have done it before in utterly despicable ways and for some reason it seems to be their 'cause' - were I vindictive I'd be looking into their expense accounts right now for some justified retribution. Or googlebombing them as a bunch of tossers.

Instead I'm mindful that a lot of exceptionally interesting, thought-provoking blogs might now come to an end. What is to stop companies and public bodies from hunting down people who may have been negative about them. What blogger, with bills to pay and mouths to feed, is now going to take the chance of lifting the lid on mismanagement, badly though policies or idiotic governmental decrees when there is the very real chance that their identities can be revealed for nothing more than a lurid headline on someone's chip wrapper.

Why should bloggers put their careers at risk, over subjects that they are evangelical about, when the simpler, safer option is to fall back into the horde of people who grumble under their breath yet risk nothing to change things for the better. The world can then continue with less public scrutiny because people are scared to speak out.

If it is so important to know a bloggers name so as to better judge them as a source, then I think that it is time to do away with the journalistic practice of protecting sources. After all, without producing the source, the journalist could be (gasp) making up lies. I think we should also know, for definite, what enticements a journalist has had to write a piece for a paper - that 'holiday in France' piece, was it 'bought' by the holiday company that receives the good review?

(The answer is that this does go on - I've seen it with my own eyes)

I wonder if Judge Eady reads blogs, or even has any idea what a blog is. I wonder if he has any idea of what a door he has opened for witch hunts and the reduction of our knowledge of public services to bitesized PR fluff. I wonder if he realises that anonymity is one of the strengths of the internet, not a weakness.

And as for the Times - I wouldn't wipe my arse on it.

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I am exceptionally busy this week, with a 60 hour work week, two days of conference and numerous other things dotted around the place. I barely have time to sleep, let alone eat or write.

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Photograph by Robotson licensed under a CC license.

I thought I would wait until I saw what was in the public domain before commenting on this story, some friends of mine had attended this call and had told me about it.

A police patrol car which hit and killed a teenager in east London while answering a 999 call had not been sounding its siren, police said.

Khaleel Rehman, 16, from East Ham, was knocked off his bicycle on a pedestrian crossing in Ron Leighton Way, East Ham, in the early hours of Saturday.

|t is a terrible, tragic, incident and my sympathies go out to all those involved. Whatever I write here is not designed to deflect or apportion blame to anyone involved, but just to provide some information that the media might not be aware of.

The main concern is that sirens were not being used by the police car. According to earlier BBC reports the accident occurred around half past midnight. At these times of the night we do not routinely use sirens - in most cases the blue lights of a vehicle are easier to see than trying to place where the sound of a siren comes from. We are also aware that people are trying to sleep - and so running around with sirens blaring at all times of the night would result in a large number of complaints to the emergency services.

Imagine also if you live near an ambulance station, or one of the popular junctions.

The choice is simple - do you run the sirens all the time in the unproved theory that it will stop an accident, or do you let the driver use their judgement as to when they are needed?

When I'm driving around at night I often see bicycle riders, and it seems that for many of them the standard dress, as it were, is that of dark clothes and no lights or reflectors on their bike. On more than one occasion I have had the urge to pull up alongside such a cyclist and remind them that what they are doing is likely to have them end up in the back of my ambulance.

Obviously I don't know if Mr Rahman had a light and reflectors, that will be something for the IPCC to investigate.

I'd would also like to point out how surprised the police are when they hear how little blue-light driving training us ambulance people receive, I believe that the police training is both longer and much stricter than ours.

I suspect that the IPCC investigation will take some time although police cars have comprehensive 'black box' recorders, so the facts should be simple to find out. If the driver was driving dangerously, then I would hope that they suffer the same sanctions as any member the public. If they are found not responsible for the accident then I hope that they can put these terrible events behind them.

I suspect that the media would only report on one of those two outcomes.