While I was on holiday, two H1 N1 Swine flu pandemic things happened. Firstly someone in our office went down with it, and the PCT advertised for a flu manager. The person who had the flu has recovered, one person in the office decided to take Tamiflu, and no one else caught the virus. I don’t know if anyone has applied for the job, it’s not my idea of a fun way to spend your working life, but might suit someone. It seems though that things are getting serious in the world of flu related issues.

Part of our county, which sits right next to London has so far seen quite a number of cases, or supposed cases since the advice now is to stay home and ring NHS direct where you will be diagnosed over the phone on the basis of your symptoms. Discussions with colleagues who know people who have suffered so far say that it is quite a nasty virus, likely to knock you off your feet and to make you feel awful. For many people this will have been their first run in with any kind of proper flu virus, since people often have a day or two of sniffles and return telling you they have had flu.

My colleagues working in midwifery in that part of the county are already putting plans into place (as I am sure all ward and community manager are) for if and when staffing levels dip so low that normal services cannot be guaranteed and they have to prioritise. I and many others have completed a form owning up to being nurses, and offering to pick up some slack if needed. I wonder why though in that planning process no one has suggested it might be a good idea for people like me to think about some of our mandatory training (BLS, infection control and moving and handling) come to mind. You can imagine therefore what might happen. We hit a crisis, managers who are also clinicians and who currently sit in their office are asked to mobilise. We will we though be fit for any kind of practice?

Maybe all of this will come to nothing. Maybe the thing will just chug on through the flu season proper. But maybe if you are going to plan to mobilise your qualified nurses who happen to be working in management you might like to encourage them to get themselves properly prepared.

We live in a world where there are definitely more old people, people are living longer and people are living longer with illnesses and conditions that previously would have killed them at an earlier age. However we are often told in this country that our population are not necessarily happy with their lot. While they eat better, have more disposible income even in poverty than some of our ancestors did, they are often less healthy in terms of both physical and mental health. Perhaps in the past, if you didn’t die of a health problem during childhood and were relatively healthy, you stayed that way until you became ill and died at what we might consider to be young by todays terms. You might then have considered, perhaps on your death bed that you had had a ‘good innings’ (I’ve heard people say this quite a few times) and could face death knowing that you’d done what you expected. Now though we expect more, and perhaps we also expect not to actually die.

This last couple of weeks I have heard of the death of 3 people who died perhaps before there time in all cases. I knew one of those people a little (she was our PCT chair), another I felt I knew through her blog posts which often told of her small triumphs despite failing health, and the third I only knew through his music and what I had seen of him on TV. None of those people could be described as old, indeed Michael Jackson was only 2 months older than my own husband. But the death of these 3 people (we often in health talk of things happening in 3’s) has moved me to think about life and about how we can make the most of life and enjoy what we have of it.

In the NHS (and outside of it of course) there has been much talk of pensions. There are people in the media and in politics who, because of the poor performance of private pensions would like public sector pension holders to be penalised. It is not fair apparently that we should have something good for relatively little when others have paid quite a bit for what is pretty much worthless. I have paid 6% of my salary for nearly 30 years, at the beginning it was 6% of very little, but it was a lot to me as a poorly paid student nurse. Our scheme offers a payment at the end based on final salary and, because I am a nurse and I joined when I did I can retire at age 55 (or after 40 years for full entitlement). This is no longer affordable to the whole public sector economy, changes have been made, and will continue to be made, perhaps quite rightly. The statutory age for retirement by the time I reach 55 will be 65 and is highly likely to increase to 68 or even 70. Personally I don’t think retirement at 55 will be an option, however I might still want to take my NHS pension when I can and I might actually want to do something else.

I have, thoughout my career met and known a number of people who have either not lasted to retirement, or who have died or become ill shortly afterwards. These people have often looked forward to the range of things they might be able to do when they no longer had to provide nursing care to others, or no longer needed to turn up to the office only to find they were never able to fulfil those dreams. I for one have to tell you that I already value my life, I come from a family of women who don’t tend to live long or well (my maternal grandmother had a heart condition from age 60, my mum has had a number of strokes and is 69, my paternal grandmother had rheumatoid arthritis and died at 66).

With my son off to university in the autumn I intend to put some extra effort into my career and the type of job I can do. But it won’t be to the detriment of the quality of my life, it wont add years to my career, it wont make me want to spend my evenings and weekends putting in extra time, and it won’t make me want to extend my career in the NHS. I have other things I’d like to do, more things I’d like to learn (that have nothing to do with nursing or health). I may live to 100, but if as I suspect, I don’t I want to be able to say on my deathbed that I have had a good innings.

The two photos above are from my recent trip to the south of France, taken while I was making the most of life!

Julie visits her own blog.

It is true. Not only haven’t I posted for about a month and a half, but I don’t seem to have even dropped by. I have got lazy, I have been on holiday, I have visited facebook, I might even have twittered, but why haven’t I been by my trusty blog?

It is complex in truth. I have to change it’s name. I still work for the NHS but to be honest I can’t write about that whole thing, except in general terms. As I have said before, I am there doing a job not done by anyone else in the county and that makes it just too risky. I am however lazy and I am short on ideas. I will try, but if I can’t sort myself out soon, I might need to kiss goodbye to Life in the NHS.

Maybe, I should get myself reborn?

In my absence though what has been learned?

Today I have seen that in death, Michael Jackson is portrayed as a genius, when in life people called him wacko and showed no respect. People who don’t seem ‘normal’ to us might actually have led lives that damage them.

MPs have become the estate agents and bankers of 2009. No one likes them, or trusts them. Yet next year in the election people will declare that they cannot be bothered to vote, it makes no difference. When everyone says that, the wrong people get into power and people will be sorry.

Nice in France is a lovely place. It is however very expensive and only the rich and famous can afford to go there.

I should write more blog posts…. now isn’t that where I came in?

I am pretty sure that if I entered a competition, to name a new form of pandemic flu, first prize a trip to Mexico my answer wouldn’t be ‘Swine’. But I guess that I  might not have forseen the involvement of the pig, so what do I know? The media here are loving this. Yes they would deny it, but if you can put on your front page that 750,000 people are likely to die, why be realistic? I travelled today on a train to London, no one wore facemasks, but then no one sneezed. I spent several minutes myself (currently suffering from hay fever) wanting to sneeze, but fearing panic dared not. Even if I had a tissue handy I had no where to wash my hands or dispose of my tissue and what is for sure I don’ t want to be thrown off a speeding train.

I am not trying to make light of this whole thing, since people have died and it is pretty worrying to those directly involved. However, I think the hysteria misleads and detracts from the seriousness of the situation. Plus please don’t let my reintroduction to clinical nursing be at the sharp end of a surgical mask dishing out antivirals!!!

The picure above particularly fits as my day in london was about a commissioning strategy for breastfeeding. Did you know that breast fed babies are more likely to be healthy and less likely to be obese? No? Well thats cos it is less interesting than a flu from Mexico caused by pigs and called Swine!!

That is the news rotating around the screen during the News this morning. Another message tells us that her family would like to be left in privacy. A reporter is outside her house which was purchased through her place in the media circus she lived and died within. so far they have shown a couple of black cars with darkened windows leave the house, apparently one of them contained the body. We have seen Jade’s mum, giving a brief statement telling us that Jade died at 3.55am.

I can’t quite decide what to make of all of this and of the wall to wall TV and magazine coverage of the last few weeks. On one hand, this is all indicative of the way in which live is lived these days – apparently as if we are all living in a fly on the wall documentary – on the other I know that Jade has raised the profile of Cervical cancer, of smear testing and of getting your daughter the HPV vaccine which might just prevent this kind of thing in the future.

Jade, as I have said before, joined the  Big Brother reality TV show 7 years ago, she struggled to fit in with both her housemates and the public, but eventually people warmed to her. She was poorly educated which then looked like ignorance, eventually though people recognised a certain child like innocence which people embraced. Over the next few years though she was in turn loved and hated in equal measures, culminating with a return to the celebrity version of Big Brother and allegations of racism.

Back in the Big Brother goldfish bowl, this time in India, Jade was told on live TV that she was suffering from cancer. The rest of her life has been played out in glossy magazines and on Living TV. Personally I have not watched the programme nor have I bought OK magazine, it felt somehow voyeuristic in the unpleasant extreme to do so.

But, and this is a big but. If the life and death of Jade Goody encourages the age limit for cervical screening on the NHS to be lowered to 20 (after all young people have sex at an early age and are more promiscuous than we would like),  and if more people come forward for regular screening then some good will have come out of the whole thing. People joining the big brother treadmill (no doubt the series will start again soon) should take note. Big brother might bring you some fame, perhaps some infamy, but no amount of money will ever buy you good health or a long life.

Please note I am not criticising Jade Goody. I am however questioning the way in which we view celebrity life.

Taxi rapist may have attacked more than 100 | UK news | The Guardian.

As this article says, this man, a London Black Cab driver was able to continue his awful crimes undetected, partly because of the way in which the police investigated the crimes reported by often young women. As you will see, the Guardian uses the word rape, other news papers use the term ’sexual assault’ and the BBC on its website and in its news bulletins has called these awful crimes ‘assaults’. Personally I think this is a weak representation of what went on here – the drugging of women who got into his cab thinking he was trustworthy and the awful realisation when they awoke that a sex crime had taken place. The police are conducting an investigation into how this man was able to get away with these crimes for so long, I’d like the BBC to take a look at why they say the women were ‘assaulted’.

I am grateful that my son, just turned 18 is soon to leave school.  We live in an area of our county where the schools while ok are nothing special, we have never been able to pay for education and what is more at 11 he was no high fligher. Now though he is doing well. A combination of good teachers and serious commitment since GCSEs mean that he is in sight of a very good University place. The school though will not be so lucky, it will be the victim of over provision despite the fact its results are better than those near by that will survive. This year, when my son has left, there will be no year 7 intake. I wonder how long before the teachers start to look elsewhere? I wonder before changes in local residents mean that it is decided a mistake has been made?

If your school is not the best then you cannot always command the best teachers, this has definitely been the case in certain subjects at certain times. What then if you could attract out of work professionals during a recession and between now and the new school year in September allow them to become teachers? A Post Graduate Certificate in Education, the basic qualification for teaching following first level degree takes a year, but apparently if you have been made redundant from the city and wish to teach maths or science you might soon complete this in 6 months. Today’s teenagers are wise, they are demanding, they are confrontational and that is only the ones who actually see the point in learning. Can you learn how to manage classrooms and their occupants, even with the knowledge of life in 6 months?

Whats next? Qualified nurses after a year, a doctor after 2?

I have never been more glad that I have an 18 year old son and not an 11 year old. I don’t need my child’s education mucked about with on the whim of government ministers trying to sort out the country’s mess.

This blog post comes from a Labour supporter and the granddaughter of a lifelone Labour supporter from the working class north east of England. Give me strength, I am starting to sound like Doctors Crippen and Jobbing!!

I am trying out the Press This feature on word Press, so here is the link to an article in the Daily Telegraph from a few days ago.

America just doesn’t get this Jade Goody thing :: Tom Leonard.

Well actually I am not sure I get it either. Jade Goody appeared in Big Brother, she was young, from a poor background, she was loud and unfortunately showed herself to be poorly educated. To begin with she struggled for support both inside the house and with the public at large, but gradually people came to like her. She did not win the competition although in terms of earnings since the show in 2002 she has probably earned more money and has certainly covered more square inches of newspaper, news and internet than the rest of the housemates including the winner. Since then Jade has been celebrated and vilified in equal measure, she has had relationships, given birth to 2 children, had a boob job, and in an act that would end most careers appeared with her mother in celebrity big brother and been accused of racism, bigotry and other moral crimes.

When Jade discovered last year that she had cervical cancer she set about managing the concequences of the disease in the public eye. If you had been so inclined you could have followed her treatment on a programme on Living TV while grabbing daily updates on the TV. This has not been without good effects for the wider public, after all the number of people seeking cervical screening has increased dramatically and hopefully it will do no harm to the HPV vaccine for girls (if people can see the links). I admire Jades decision, on learning that the disease was terminal, to marry her boyfriend and sell rights to the wedding to the highest glossy magazine winner. The money will after all go on to help support her young family (you would hope).

Now though I say enough. It is not just death that needs dignity but the process of dying. If you have just weeks to live then you should concentrate your energies on those who are most important to you. Who ever you are there are few certainties in life but you will be born and at some point, hopefully much later you will die. I do not expect to see every moment of that life and death. This would be true if a person were famous because they were great at sport, acting, politics or even if they were a member of some royal family. Jade became famous and perhaps infamous for appearing on a reality show. Reality TV is not real life and people must not be encouraged to think otherwise. We do not actually know people like Jade, and we should not be made to think that we have to be part of her death because somehow she is a part of our lives. I wish Jade a dignified death, I am sorry this has happened to her and to her family, but I don’t want to see any more of this filling my newspaper, TV and the internet. I hope that doesn’t make me feel too hard.

From the moment a woman is pregnant (if not before) it seems that there is a reason to suppose she is doing or about to do something wrong. She must take the right supplements, eat the right food, drink no alcohol, and generally do everything she is expected to do. For many people pregnancy means difficulties at work, where despite anti discrimination legislation and rules about time allowed off for antenatal appointments an increasing number of women avoid telling their employer until they have to and attend appointments in their own time (so I am told by midwife colleagues).

Once the baby is born on one hand we must stay at home to look after our babies but on the other hand we should go to work to help support the family and the economy. After all we  mustn’t be a drain on society. There is a continuous stream research reports that we are told demonstrate that pretty much all of the ills of our children are down to parenting and most specifically mothers. As a working mum for most of my son’s life I have been told many times by people both in real life and by those on the sofa’s of news and current affairs programmes that I should be there for my child during his fomative years. Over time we have been informed that nurseries are better or worse than one to one care of a child minder, and most recently of grandparents. What is certain is that all child care of whatever type is not the same, and that different types of care are better for different children at different times.

The research carried out by social psychologists and sociologists is likely to be interesting and informative, but is also likely to be complex and time consuming to read. Great then that our great popular media unpicks it for us. Well no, I am not so sure. An article in yesterday’s online Guardian is pretty clear about that:

The authors of an inquiry into the state of childhood have accused some parts of the media of misrepresenting their research to attack working mothers.

Richard Layard, of the London School of Economics, and Judy Nunn, of King’s College London, who wrote A Good Childhood, published by the Children’s Society last week, say in a letter to the Guardian that their research was twisted.

Layard told the Guardian: “The bit about working mothers was wrongly reported and the family breakup was distorted as if to say it’s about blame rather than what we can do to make work better.

“We simply didn’t say mothers shouldn’t go out to work. People should have a choice: better childcare and equally more entitlement to parental leave for mothers and fathers.”

Nunn said: “My main feeling is that nobody has read the book so they don’t know what we said. It was reported as an attack on selfish parents, we didn’t say that. Single parents were blamed, we don’t say that and working mothers were also blamed. That is such a long, long way from the truth. Parents should have the option to stay at home – that should be made easier. They should have the option to go back to their job and more job security when they have a child.”

This just confirms my feelings that you must be careful about what you read and where and equally careful about what you take at face value.

As a working mum I had no choice but to work (if we wanted to keep a roof and feed ourselves), my son attended a number of childcare options. This has not stopped me being in school for shared reading, attending assemblies and special events, parent consultation during the day etc. But then I have a good and understanding employer with work life balance policies. Just don’t expect me to feel guilty that my son has grown into the great young man he is today!

The UK and particularly the southern part of the country is not really used to this kind of weather incident. I kid you not, that is exactly what I heard a weather operative (forcaster / presenter) call the snow this morning. Meanwhile a BBC journalist was seen standing outside a saltmine in Northern Ireland and a Sky reporter was seen outside of one some where in England. The weather has led to some bizarre reporting. I have decided to wait for a lull in the blizzard before I set off for work, plus I have cheekily decided to take lunch at 9.30 and get an early hair cut. Therefore you are getting a post of things you can do when it snows here in the UK. This will be followed by some things you can’t do.

My favorite thing to do today would be to sit on your sofa drinking coffee and surfing the net. The place to go to get a range of great nursing stories is Change of Shift Take my advice and get over to Keith’s place Digital Doorway. You could do worse!

Keeping to the theme of sitting down, you could watch TV. As I speak a range of great news programmes are available and it is fun to see the presenters standing in the snow, looking freezing cold, telling us what we can see out of the window – it is snowing

If you would rather immerse yourself in another world then you can do worse than to read a book. I am reading a great book by Barbara Wood at the moment. The Dreaming is set in Victorian Austrailia when much of the country was a mystereous place to the white man.

You could put on your hat, scarf and coat and go off for a walk, you can also throw snowballs and you can do sledging. Be careful though, I heard on the radio that there are gangs of youths in the streets of the uk throwing snow balls in an unpleasant way. This could lead to an arrest. You also need to take care when sledging as this week sadly a young girl was killed following this persuit.

Make soup or a stew or something. This is the kind of pursuit our grandparents would have favoured, though of course all winters were like this one and people had less heating in their houses then. My hubby was very impressed yesterday that I gave him stew with dumplings, and therefore he is obviously easily pleased.

What you mustn’t do if you listen to the doom mungerers is to leave your house by car – conditions are terrible, and indeed they are since no one has been gritting our roads round here. Apparently they may have run low. Someone from the council needs to visit a salt mine! What you also can’t really do is walk on the pavements. Snow, thaw, ice, snow, thaw, ice etc has caused everyone to fear walking the streets. Also you can’t do much shopping in the town here. Yesterday I found that a number of town centre shops were closed all day. Lack of staff to work there? Later this month retail sales will have fallen and everyone will blame the snow. Perhaps if staff went to work they might sell something? Who knows. Lastly if you are a school student or a teacher, don’t bother with school as it will be closed. My son has now missed 4 days of schooling in what is the most important final year. Even he would like to attend school now please!

So there you have it, an assessment by Julie of what to do and what to do when snow falls in the UK!

With the media full of doom and gloom about recessions, credit crunches and job losses it is not surprising that people who wouldn’t previously have touched the public sector with a barge pole are apparently applying for jobs in the health service, local authorities and others. Indeed during times of recession people re-evaluate their personal values and may decide that earning great wads of cash is their only driver and develop a vocation for teaching, nursing, the police force etc. This in my opinion is a good thing. We need people in the public sector who have the experience of real life (if the financial sector is real life that is). What people need not think though is that the public sector is recession proof.

The difference for us is that our recession will be at a different time from the real world’s. This is because we are relying on the allocation of public money. Recently we have had some good years of investment. In the UK the government has been on improving services and has pushed money at doing so. Unfortunately some of our accountants and managers were unable to manage these resources well and some of us therefore were able to experience a down turn at a time of stockmarket boom. Government needs to be mean and lean and if that’s the case then we in the health service need to be lean and mean too. We have had to develop the skills for examining a pathway of care and seeking investment in the services within it. However this generally means disinvestment somewhere else rather than new money as such.

If you are currently an accountant, business manager or even a consutruction worker looking for a change then you can do worse than the public sector. We have reasonable salaries, we have good HR practices (its hard to be sacked and you get something called work life balance), we have good holidays and we still have a pension. But you will be expected to work hard, you will be expected to interact with the public and you will be expected to remember that the patient / child / service user is central to your service. We have excellent training opportunities, some career structure and a often a predominance of women. But you will encounter people who have been doing things a certain way for years and you will be subject to down turns in fortune as well as years of boom. Also remember that a job in the public sector is not just for Christmas, some of us seem to have been there the whole of our lives!

He two-timed me on Facebook. But our divorce will be for real

My husband has a natural distrust of the internet and of sites like friends reunited and facebook in particular. He claims they assist in the break up of marriage, I always tell him that real people break up marriages not the internet. Recently though I have seen a darker side. Nothing to do with marriage break up per say, but more about manipulation of those on the periphery. Over the last couple of months the marriages of both my brothers have fallen apart (is it me I ask?) I am on facebook and so are both sisters in law. I have no axe to grind with either of them. They are the mother’s of  my nephews and neices, they are human beings and I believe it takes two to make both a good relationship and a bad one. But one sister in law in particular has begun to write status reports that seem intentioned to test out whether I support her or my brother and really that is not on.

Then I read this

My mother emailed me last week to tell me she had joined Facebook. We don’t chat on the phone; we email. Soon I expect she will want to poke me, write on my wall and, worse still, tag me in photographs of my wedding last May. Well, not if I can help it, mama. I love you too much to expose you to my online self.

You see, she doesn’t yet know that I, her 24-year-old daughter, am about to divorce. She can’t see my Facebook status, so why would she?

Mummy, how do I tell you I’m a Facebook divorcee? That the son-in-law you try so hard to like cheated on your only daughter using the social networking site you so adore? That your daughter learnt of her imminent divorce via Google Mail’s free chatting facility, Gchat?

It began with a woman he met at a party. But it was within the sticky web of Facebook where they really got to know each other, despite the photos of us and our “married to…” status. I know this because my husband once logged on to Facebook and foolishly left the room. I began to use his Mac, only to find myself blasted into the middle of a sizzling cyber romance.

And once I was in, I was hooked. Their lusty emails touched on bad Beat poetry, but were infused with textspeak, their coy cyberflirts rife with emoticons. It felt like I was stuck in a hyper-reality where Douglas Coupland wrote Danielle Steel novels. “Could this really be happening six months into my marriage?” I wanted to comment on my own Facebook wall.

Read the rest here, it certainly makes you think!

Yesterday I wrote about the woman in California who has given birth to octuplets. Today it seems apparant that the commercial world we live in means that a bidding war may have broken out to obtain the mother’s story. Reading the story as outlined i today’s observer is quite horrific – a bankrupt grandmother, a woman appearing to health providers when already pregnant with 8 foetuses, no partner, no visible means of support.

The world as we know it is in a complete mess. But it is not the bombs of terroists or the acts of a terrible dictator that have brought us to this point. Instead we have emerged from a couple of decades when we thought we could have anything we wanted, never mind the cost. The only value we seem to understand these days is financial. How did we lose sight of the important things in life.

Imagine the basics of life. What is important to you? Health? Family? A roof? Food on the table? Honesty? Trust? Happiness?

Where  in all of this does material wealth and the ability to over ride need over want originate? At a meeting last week colleagues spoke of women misunderstanding the point of the ultrasound scan performed 12 or so weeks into pregnancy. People are thinking of this event as a way of perhaps predicting the sex of their baby, of a way of seeing it wave at them. Actually this is provided to check that there are no abnormalities. To me this is indicitive of the way we have been living our lives recently.

In our house we are no stranger to the effect of recession. Hubby works in manufacturing industry and has been made redundant no less than 4 times, twice as a direct result of recession (1979 and 1991). It is no joke when you have a small baby and are still on maternity leave to wonder just how you will last longer than a month. How you will pay the mortgage and the bills and how you will buy food. Luckily for us, every time it has happened something has turned up and unemployment has not been for long. Luckily for us too, my job even taking account of recent uncertainties is pretty safe. Indeed it is at times like this that applications for nursing, teaching and other public sector careers increases.

I am getting pretty fed up however with the attitude of the media, particularly that on the TV and as I watch it most, the BBC. Tonight in my opinion, amongst what was an ‘I told you so’ mentality of what appeared like glee with a straight face they showed us a 5 months old baby whose whole life has been spent in recession!! I ask you? What is that about?

I am pretty serious about this topic myself. It is truly awful – redundancy, short time, extended leave with or without pay, people unable to get credit, unable to get mortgages. But really for most people is it really all that bad? If you can maintain a roof, if you can buy food to live, if you can heat your house, if you can still drive your car? Then actually isn’t this just the opportunity many of us need. We need to learn that what we earn is what we spend. We need to understand that if our car is older than 3 years old it will not fall apart and blow up. We need to understand that we don’t need to eat out every week. We need to learn that we don’t need a gym to get exercise. We need to know that we can’t have everything we want.

Maybe the recession will be painful (and even if it isn’t the BBC will tell us it is), maybe it will be long (lets hope not) but maybe some of us might just learn more about what is important in life and on the way learn something of the value of money and the danger of credit.

Thanks to Chris for this link

You will buy the X Factor winning song, and low and behold people will. Last week Simon Cowell announced that whichever of the 3 finalists won X Factor at the weekend would become the Christmas number 1 record for 2008. Apparently 8 million people voted for the winner Alexandra Burke and so even if just a small proportion of people actually buy the record (physically or as a download) and Christmas is the top time to buy music then Simon is pretty much on to a winner. Alex’s version of Hallelujah is a pretty reasonable version, though I have to admit I prefer the Jeff Buckley version, it is however the principle that annoys me rather than her worthiness to have a hit record. I am not a fan of arrogance nor of people who tell me what I will and will not do. It all feels like a bit of a conspiracy. Personally I would be more likely to download / buy the slightly more cheesy offering by Sir Terry Wogan and Aled Jones, who are both of course national treasures; a song recorded for charity. But then I am not really Simon Cowell’s target audience and he is unlikely to suffer because of my principles!