testing times...

Another day spent, largely on the telephone. Boy did we make a mistake when we opted out of applying for DLA. It would seem that, in order to access any services at all, life is in fact a whole lot more straightforward if you've already run this particular means tested gauntlet. Anyway, dealt with now I hope. Just have to wait and see what the postie brings.

Does make me angry though - seeing so much money being spent on the Edinburgh / Glasgow visit by HHP and HMQ - when we are struggling to meet basic needs in the community. Did you know for example that, if you make a request for an urgent referral for a wheelchair you will be directed towards the OT service for assessment. This can take weeks rather than days to get organised and so in the short term, NHS advise you to speak to their partners the Red Cross.

Well, that puts you in a totally different ball park. Rather than being in a position where you are now able to demand services, you are dealing with an over worked, under funded charity who is doing their level best to help you. So, when I asked about bariatric chair provision and I was told that there was only one in the whole of Dundee and that it was currently out on loan, you can probably understand that I didn't feel that I was able to get angry or annoyed.

The next recommendation, that I should call around and see what the other offices in Perth and Forfar has to offer, was all very well intended, but what? Not surprisingly the RC expect you to pick the chair up from them and their hours are limited to weekdays between 10 and 2 or thereabouts. Now I don't drive, so just exactly how is that supposed to happen?

Not having a go at the sterling charitable works of the organization here, but as a way of providing a national service it sucks.

Top the whole day off with a moralizing lecture from HHP about "aggressive sectarianism" and I wondered if why we were paying so dearly to have him tell us what we already know. However his comments relating atheistic thought with the ideas propounded by the extreme wing of German Nationalist Socialists make me really angry.

As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a "reductive vision of the person and his destiny" [Caritas in Veritate, 29].

from the Edinburgh Speech

Doesn't quite hold with this quote from the Glasgow speech...

The evangelisation of culture is all the more important in our times, when a "dictatorship of relativism" threatens to obscure the unchanging truth about man's nature, his destiny and his ultimate good. There are some who now seek to exclude religious belief from public discourse, to privatise it or even to paint it as a threat to equality and liberty. Yet religion is in fact a guarantee of authentic liberty and respect, leading us to look upon every person as a brother or sister.

But then, what would I know. This man who declares that money is "a temptation" that is placed before us every day, that it is both "destructive" and "devisive", this man who stands before us before his God in all his ceremony and finery, has little in common with me. As I see it today, he has taken money from the coffers of this country to pay for his visit and we have received little but criticism, ambiguity and hypocrisy in return. Still, I guess he's the one that gets the fancy clothes and the free holiday...

Addendum; the image is of my son. Day 2 chemotherapy. Feeling pretty c***.