Freedom of speech
Been thinking about this all day because of controversy over a play in Birmingham that (supposedly, as I haven’t seen it) depicts rape and murder in a Sikh temple. Local Sikhs are up in arms about it. I doubt Christians would be upset about a similar play set in a church; that’s already been done (Murder in the Cathedral, TS Eliot). Bashing someone on the head with a candlestick in a church is a common theme for detective novels and murder mysteries.

There’s been much argument about freedom of speech on the radio all day. We’re not going to bow to censorship said the producers. What about common sense? Freedom of speech, I've decided, means freedom from prosecution by the government; it doesn’t mean freedom from persecution by others. One speaker on the radio used the word 'prudence'. Quite.

And talking about common sense
There’s not a lot of it about at work. I walked up a quiet corridor to go to the shops to try to buy another mobile phone as mine is on the blink. In the corridor by a door that led to offices was a pile of black plastic bags full of rubbish. On one of the bags was a large label saying confidential waste. It’s bad enough to leave such waste in a public place but even worse to draw attention to it. Had the person putting the bags in the corridor a brain?

Mobile woes
Four days before Christmas, when from now on the shops and roads will be full of frantic shoppers, my phone packs up. What a nuisance. Mobile phones are so small these days that I shall have a job to find one with keys I can see, let alone poke. And one without a camera.

Freedom of speech (part 2)
Freedom of speech doesn’t mean people will listen quietly to your opinions. The WI, annoyed with Tony Blair’s speech, gave him a slow handclap. Actions, however legal, can still annoy others.

The offending play in Birmingham has been stopped by the producers. ‘The law abiding lose out to the law breaking’ was one comment. So what’s new?

‘Normal crime’ was a term used by Peter Mandelson on Radio 4 this morning. Normal? Should we refer to any crime as that?

Thirty years in the NHS
I’ve worked in the NHS for thirty years. What has changed in that time? More paperwork, like death and taxes, the inevitable; like meetings and mistakes. Can’t stop those. Surgery has improved, anaesthesia has improved, but more from advances in technology and pharmacology than from human behaviour. There have been other changes, although I’m not sure if they are advances or sideways steps. Hospitals have become alcohol and smoke free zones, a reflection of society rather than management.

Lack of responsibility

Those who packed the confidential waste into black plastic bags on Monday and labelled it carefully are unconcerned about its being left in a public corridor outside their offices. Instead of being grateful for having their attention drawn to this lapse of security, they say it is not their problem; the cleaners put the bags there.

One of the senior theatre nurses, who’d also spotted the bags, had spoken to someone in the office block but had come up against apathy. ‘Can you do something?’ he said to me. I said I’d email the medical director and include copies of the photos I took of the offending bags. The medical director sent round a memo a few weeks ago telling staff to be more careful with confidential waste. This should be put in black bags and labelled so it could be disposed of properly. I doubt he meant it to be left, neatly labelled, in public corridors. He reckoned without the halfwits in the hospital.

No let up in the NHS for staff for Christmas; gone are the days when work wound down. Christmas makes no difference other than it’s a bank holiday and for two weeks of the year the wards look cheerful. Gone are the days of departmental parties when work stopped. Parties are now out of hours.

Post office employees don’t seem to have caught up with the 21st century. Some are going to strike today because they are expected to work in the afternoon, as they are paid to do so, instead of being allowed to stop work at 12.30 as is ‘traditional’. Tradition. Is that now a good enough reason to do or not to do something? I think it’s risky to rely on that.

One good thing about Christmas is that there is likely to be little traffic on the roads. It’s the one day of the year when it’s possible to speed on the M25. I shall have to concentrate to avoid doing so. Speeding motorists would be easy pickings.