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2899

Ross’ Day in Britain.

Awoke in agony. I’ve been having some ear trouble, a suspected ear infection, but never had one before.

So on the way to a meeting I pop into a local pharmacist who asks me three questions and confirms it’s probably an inner ear infection, but they can’t give me anything until I’ve seen a doctor.

It’s half past 9. I ring my doctor in the hopes of getting a phone consultation for a prescription.

Nope. Turns out the receptionist can give me a full appointment at my local hospital at 10 o’clock. We both agree I can’t get there on time so we book an afternoon appointment.

I clear it with work, who also tell me not to come back today as making sure my head doesn’t explode is important.

So I turn up for my appointment and get sent by reception to a different reception. Who tell me to go back to the first reception as they always send everyone to the second reception as most people need to go there anyway.

I return to main reception, get signed in and wait.

And wait, for an hour. It’s no issue, I’ve got the day off now and the waiting room is fully air conditioned against the current heat wave.

After an hour I go back to reception and ask how long it’s going to be because I will need to put more money in the parking machine.

Reception tells me not to bother as the parking man had already been for his daily check. They then ring the person I’ve come to see, who has been told I’ve never arrived. Reception explains that I am absolutely here.

I am seen within two minutes. One of my ear canals is “Lovely” and the other one causes her to go “Ooooooooh” in that way plumbers do.

She gives me two copies of the complaint procedure for having to wait.

I go to the pharmacy to get my medication.

Total time from start to finish. 6 hours. Additional costs to me £14.

I don’t really know why I would complain?

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2900

I was expecting you to go out to your car to find a parking ticket.

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2901

I’d put two hours on. I was out with perhaps 10 minutes to spare.

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2902

Ok confession time.

Since lockdown recycle centres in Kent have a pre booked system. You can only turn up with an appointment.

The thing is, whenever I go, I just get waved in by one of the workers sitting in a deckchair.

So last month I booked an appointment. The next available one was for 12:30.

I turned up at 9:45 and I just got waved in.

The whole system is a lie.

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2903

I hope you feel better soon. I’ve had ear infections a couple of times and they are thoroughly unpleasant, doubly so if they start affecting your sense of balance. Thankfully, in my experience, they tend to clear up quite quickly.

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2904

In a bout of what might be temporary insanity, I just agreed to get solar panels installed on my house. The grand total is something like $45k, but with federal tax credits that expire at the end of the year, it should be more like a total of $33k. Ideally, I will be paying about $150/mo for 25 years, for panels which should come close to offsetting my entire monthly power bill, in a house that I do not anticipate living in for the next 25 years.

On the bright side, the loan is transferable, so we could pass it on to whoever we sell our house to, or pay a couple thousand to have the company move them to a new home and get them re-installed. Site survey to ensure our home can actually have them mounted is next week, then 2-3 months for the actual installation, and a bit later after an inspection, they can actually be turned on.

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2905

Hot.

I haven’t worn a t-shirt for the last two days because I instantly overheat. Perks of working from home I suppose.

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2906

This is one of those things that I will never understand, why hospital and health centres charge you for parking. Is not like you are going there for fun or anything. And don’t get me started with the prepaid ticket system. “Oh, I may have appendicitis, I will pay for two hours, or shall I put more in case they have a bit of a wait??” Preposterous.

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2907

When we got panels installed in 2014, it cost us $30K and the payout was 9 years (ie: we would make $30K, more-or-less, in 9 years).

They have earned slightly more than $4k a year every year since (an average of $350/month… $600 in the summer, $100 in the winter, and one February in 2017 we made $10.14 for the entire month).

Fantastic investment for us. At this point they have more-than paid off themselves and it’s just so lovely to get more than a week’s pay for doing nothing once a month.

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2908

And so here… the money you get from generating power on your roof was reduced to so little that it does NOT pay for itself at all anymore. This was a few years ago and they went all „surprised pikachu-face“ when private households stopped installing solar and then the local industry died. And wind energy is a different issue but with the same consequences. :angry: ← shorthand for my take on local energy politics of the last decade+.

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2909

Sadly, as it was explained to me, here any excess you generate does not get paid to you, but rather builds up a credit, so if you do end up needing more electricity than you generate anything charged will come out of the credit first. So ideally, we still will not pay anything for electricity overall, but we aren’t going to get a check from the power company.

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2910

And (I’m not sure if this is true.) but staff have to pay as well?

1 Like
2911

I know someone who was responsible for bringing in charging for parking at a hospital in a London suburb. The reason they did it was because the hospital was near a train station. The car park would fill up between 7:30 and 8:30 am and stay full of the same cars until 17:30 to 19:00. Commuters using free parking meant no patients or visitors could park there. By introducing a small charge it stopped it just being a commuter park and people going to hospital could actually park in the hospital car park.

Maybe now technology would allow a different solution but that was the rational at the time and it worked.

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2912

People are terrible at times.

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2913

One of the bigger hospitals here in town is in a residential area where parking is difficult already. So all the spots around the hospital are paid parking. I hated having to pay when I went to visit someone but I always found a spot.

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2914

Parking is charged for a number of reasons. (I am UK based so only talking about the NHS - I’m guessing private hospitals charge as well)

  1. To increase funding to the hospital
  2. To increase turnover of spaces so patients can park as needed - especially in hospitals where their car parks are convenient for other things
  3. (and kind of related to the first) it goes towards the upkeep of the car park - maintenance of lights etc making them as safe as possible late at night.

Some hospitals exempt their staff, some don’t. Personally, I think staff SHOULD be exempt.

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2915

Last time I saw a doctor (many years ago) it was an awful experience.

It took a month to get an appointment, at which I got fobbed off for another month. They did eventually get me an X-ray but then I heard nothing for another month. Because the X-ray didn’t show anything the doctor decided I was fine. I eventually got some physio and I’ve been good since.

I sprained my ankle badly just before the pandemic. While I was back on my feet a few days later it’s never been completely right. Despite having changed doctors since then, I was put off by that previous experience (and the whole pandemic situation).

I noticed my GP does online consultations. Within a few minutes of filling in the form I’ve been offered an appointment with a physio for next week. Kinda wish I’d done that sooner.

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2916

That makes sense, and it can be sorted by making stays longer than say, 4 hours, chargeable, and then if you have to stay longer for medical reasons you get a voucher. I understand that locations which are within a city are more difficult to manage, but the Outlet in Swindon had something similar, where if you were there for over a time (I think it was the 4 hours, but my memory fails me) you had a large bill unless you showed tickets of your shopping at the information desk.

I see how the parking maintenance will need a budget, and I can see how that money could be invested in the actual hospital, but, in fairness, does it need to be paid by the staff and patients? That is an interesting topic.

For what I know, when my partner worked in hospitals in Bristol and Swindon, she had to pay, sometimes with a discount. Or sometimes she had to give herself an extra hour to find parking (Bristol Royal Infirmaries) and walk to work.

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2917

Finally tested positive for COVID for the first time on Saturday morning after showing symptoms on Friday evening. Starting to feel almost back to normal now but Saturday was awful (compounded, I suspect, by the hot weather).

Makes me very grateful for the vaccine, I hate to think what state my body could have been in if it had no prior defences.

Bit put out that I probably caught it during a routine dental checkup. When I was leaving I overheard a receptionist phoning people to cancel their appointments because one of the dentists had tested positive for COVID… the same dentist who shares a room with the dentist that I see. If I’d have known I probably would have postponed, it was just a checkup and lying on my back with my mouth wide open wouldn’t have been high on my list of things that I’d want to do in that room.

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2918

ear infections are awful. When Ihad the first one as an adult, I understood why kids were so cranky when they had them.

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