[johninmelb]

Hope you have applied for your Green Card then. We can organise an whip round for you one way flight to America. It’ll only be in cattle class, but Trumpet can probably organise an upgrade for you.

[johninmelb]

Impossible for them to get any more self-centred than they are already. Nowhere else in the world exists for Americans. America is the world, nothing else matters.

I spent three months there back in 1981. The only thing that happened in the world according to the US media while I was there was the Solidarity uprising at the Gdansk shipyards in Poland. Nothing else in the world was reported during those three months. When I asked a friend about it, he said America has plenty of its own news. No need to report anything else as it wasn’t relevant to them.

America is now losing its relevance in the world, hence Trump and Make America Great Again. They want you to acknowledge that America is the greatest nation on earth. Always was always will be. It’s America first, second and third. The rest of the world are just also-rans to them.

[johninmelb]

Hardly Australian made if they are being imported from Italy. So long as it is not China, I don’t really care. In any case I won’t be buying them. I’ll stick to my Monte Carlos and Mint Slices. They’re the best as far as I am concerned.

[johninmelb]

This battle has been going on for donkey’s years. Not going to change. British government is broke, so where is the money going to come from anyway? I only get $50 a month UK Pension from the time I spent there on a working holiday a long long time ago. Couldn’t see that increasing significantly if the rules changed, but every little bit helps.

[johninmelb]

Sadly it is a fact of life that doctors run late with their appointments. Emergencies happen – I was left waiting for 2.5 hours one day when a woman at the local hospital decided to have her baby early. So my GP at the time had to rush up to the hospital and deal with that. They did eventually tell me that was why he was late!

But as my current GP says, most of the time they are ambushed by people who basically just want to waste the doctor’s time rabbiting on about imaginary illnesses and whatever. These people are just completely oblivious to the fact that there are genuinely sick people sitting out in the waiting room who really need to see the doctor. Now we have a fairly steep co-payment at the surgery I go to, so that is starting to weed out the time wasters. Probably another reason why many surgeries are abandoning bulk billing. People start to think twice about seeing a doctor if they have to pay.

The other thing is that if you want to talk to the doctor about a range of things, book a long appointment. I do that once a year, make a list of what I want to ask, and then have my discussion with him. He really appreciates that I respect his time.

Finally, the question to ask when you check in at the surgery for your appointment is quite simply “how many people are ahead of me”. It is unreasonable to expect the admin staff to keep you informed. If it is a large practice, most times they are run off their feet with phones, patients, billing issues, making appointments etc etc. I was a practice manager for a neurosurgeon once and I never stopped from the minute I walked in the door till I locked up and went home – and that was a one man practice.

[johninmelb]

I wouldn’t walk into a Harvey Norman shop even if they were giving stuff away free.  I loathe and detest that organisation  with a passion.

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