This letter was informing me that unless I opt out by the 31st of May, the NHS will create a “summary care record” in their spangly new multi-billion pound database.  The pitch informs me that in the first instance only details of any allergies, bad reactions to medicines and any medication I’m currently on will be included but “other important information such as serious illnesses, long term conditions and/or test results” will be added to the record.

Now I don’t have a problem with the whole NHS knowing that I have an allergy to penicillin, nor do I have a problem with them knowing that I have an inhaler for asthma.  In fact, not only don’t I have a problem with it, I positively welcome that information being available to anyone in the NHS that needs it because if I was taken into hospital for some reason and was unable to speak for myself, it’s important that the medical staff know that I have asthma and that I have an allergy to penicillin.

It makes sense that a serious illness should be on the record but if I’m knocked unconscious and taken to hospital, do they need to know that I have arthritis?  If I’d been to the doctors and had a routine blood test, would they need to know?  I don’t think they do and I’m not prepared to give the NHS or any other agency that plugs into the database in the future (and there is very little doubt in my mind that this database will be added to, shared and linked into other databases in the future) permission to record any medical details they see fit about me in a database that’s available to tens of thousands of people in the NHS and beyond.

There is no way to control the amount of information that they record in the “summary care record” – you either agree to nothing or you agree to whatever they decide to put on there and whilst you can view your own record any time you want, you can’t remove anything from it.  If it was possible to choose what type of information was recorded on the “summary care record” I would happily agree to it but as I’m not allowed any control over what goes on it and where it goes I’m going to opt out.

Back then I said:

Mrs Sane showed me an article in Reveal magazine today about a woman whose daughter was weighed and measured and then a letter was sent to her to tell her that her daughter was obese.  She isn’t obese, she’s normal and one of four children, none of which have problems with their weight.  But because she was 1lb over the “normal” weight for an “average” child with an “average” build her mother got a letter telling her her daughter was obese and therefore at increased risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, type two diabetes and cancer.

Luckily for the young girl in question – who, from the photos, looks perfectly healthy – her mother didn’t believe a word of it and has kicked off instead.  But like I said a year and a half ago, what about the parents that get the letter and inappropriately start to fatten up their child or put them on a diet?

It’s time to do away the BMI scale and start using some common sense before we end up with a generation of children pushed into an obsession with weight and body image by British government propaganda.

What rules say that a sitting MP can’t update their official website before an election has been called?  I’m not aware of any but I am aware of new rules on election expenses during a “long election campaign” which are the rules that I suspect he is misleadingly referring to.  These rules cover the 6 month period prior to an election and place strict limits on the amount of money that can be spent on an election campaign.  His website would, of course, be included as election expenditure which would limit the amount of money he can spend on leaflets, public meetings and driving tanks up the wrekin.

If those are the rules he’s referring to then I’m sure his constituents would prefer that he was spending money telling them what he’s doing for them rather than saving up a few quid for leaflets.

I phoned West Mercia police and asked to be put through to the control room at Telford and they duly put me through to the communications centre in Worcester.  I explained which dual carriageway it was (the A442) in Telford and which interchange had the problem.

“Would you say it was Shifnal to Telford or Shifnal to Bridgnorth?”  Completely different bit of road, not a dual carriageway and miles away from where I said it was.  I explained, yet again, where it was and that it was only a quarter of the way from the police station and that the local police will know exactly where I’m talking about.

“What’s nearby, so I can tell them?” Arrrrgh! I told him to trust me, just to put down what I had told him and the local police who, as I’d just mentioned, were only a quarter of a mile away, would know where I was talking about.

He finally accepted it and after a couple of minutes taking my home address and phone number and asking me if I wanted a reference number for the call I managed to get him off the phone.  All in all it took me a good 10 minutes to report a dangerous obstruction on the main arterial route through a busy town at rush hour and all because it’s no longer possible to speak to your local police station thanks to pointless regionalisation of public services.

Perverse.

And does No Mandate Brown mention the country he’s talking about once in his 30 minute election address speech? Of course not!  But he does talk about:

• Teaching in Britain
• National pride in our education system
• Our country
• Some that have concluded that Britain should follow the Swedish system
• Our national challenge

In every place where you would expect the word “England” he said “this country” or “the country” or, bizarrely, “our country”.  What a wanker.

No Mandate Brown was nominated for using the death of his daughter for political advantage on the Piers Morgan show and that, combined with his general twattishness, seems to have secured the award.

Gordon Brown, you are officially a twat.  Again.

Let’s get this straight right now – I do not support English Votes on English Laws.  It’s an insult to our nation and a constitutional fudge that is doomed to failure.

It is, however, a recognition of more than a decade of institutional discrimination against England at the hands of the British establishment and the need for English affairs to be managed by English politicians elected by, and accountable to, the people of England.  It will also inevitably lead to an English Parliament when the impracticality and inherent flaws in the system are shown up publicly.

To that end, I would encourage you to vote for the Power 2010 pledge on English Votes on English Laws.  It is currently in 4th place but it’s still too close for comfort.  Power 2010 and various other lobby groups associated with the Rowntree Trust will lobby every MP and PPC with the top 5 pledges as voted for by the public in the run-up to the election.

The first candidate, as ever, is El Presidente himself, Gordon “5 Pints” McBrown who was nominated by email for using his dead child for politicking.

The second candidate is Herman Van Rumpy-Pumpy, the President of the European Empire, for being an “Arrogant, unelected little mutant who acts like the heir to Caesar and Charlemagne. He looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book”.

A difficult choice between two very strong contestants this week.  On one hand there’s a gurning, ineffectual Scottish europhile and on the other hand there’s a gurning, ineffectual Belgian europhile.  It’s a tough one to call.

My spies tell me that David has been hauled over the coals but don’t worry, the Brownshirts haven’t sent him for “rehabilitation”, he’s been seen alive and well in the Cock Hotel in Wellington (no, that’s not a pun or a Freudian Slip).

I was sitting in the Cock last night having a quiet drink with a couple of fellow rabble rousers (one of which was the road pricing campaigner, Peter Roberts, but more on that later) when in wandered David Wright wearing a fetching Liebour-red jumper.  ”I’ll get these” he said to his comrades (they’ll probably end up on his expenses as sundry items or subsistence allowance) then they had a good laugh about scum-sucking-climate-gate.

I did try to get a question or two for him out of some scum sucking pigs on Twitter but they were too slow and I had to leave so I wandered over, warned him that there was a hacker under his table and left as he had a laugh about it.

There’s been a bit of a tweetmeme going on throughout the day with people explaining why they’ve never voted Tory/Labour using #ivenevervotedtory and #ivenevervotedlabour hashtags.

But David Wright, a junior minister in the Treasury for a few years now, had to take it too far with the comment “#ivenevervotedtory because you can put lipstick on a scum-sucking pig, but it’s still a scum-sucking pig. And cos they would ruin Britain”.

I noticed the tweet earlier but I was out with my kids and so I didn’t make anything of it but it’s ok because Tory Radio noticed it and took a screenshot (above) and then Iain Dale picked up on it.

David deleted the tweet an hour after it was posted and apologised but then, bizarrely, subsequently claimed that his Twitter account had been tinkered with!  But here’s the funny thing: it’s exactly his normal style and exactly the sort of juvenile insult he comes out with aimed at the Tories all the time.

I’ve started favouriting some of his more interesting tweets such as this inciteful comment on George Osbourne in Parliament:

Whether he looked like he was holding in a big fart I don’t know but is this an appropriate comment from an MP, let alone a Minister in the British government?  Since December he’s drunk-tweeted me, insulted me and even tried to intimidate me to stop me from asking him questions about Labour laundering taxpayers money through the unions to get state funding for the party and whether he’s a union-sponsored MP (he refuses to tell say).

But rather than take it on the chin after apologising, he quickly changed his story and said his Twitter account had been hacked.  Absolute nonsense if you ask me!  Iain Dale is now calling for support for the Tory PPC for David’s Telford constituency, Tom Biggins who already has a big advantage over David Wright in that he’s not Labour and he’s not David Wright but David does have some support still in the sinkhole housing estates that make up the bulk of his constituency.  I want David Wright out of office as much as the Tories do but I won’t be voting for Tom Biggins who’s been parachuted in from Whitchurch, still in the county but a good hours drive away.  I will be voting for – and actively supporting – the UKIP candidate, Councillor Denis Allen who has lived in Telford for years, has been a councillor in Telford for years, has served as Mayor of Wellington in Telford and is currently Deputy Mayor of Telford & Wrekin Borough.

I have a great deal of respect for David Wright for being an early adopter of Twitter amongst MPs and the fact that despite a mutual loathing he still talks to me on Twitter, even if trying to get him to answer a question is like trying to nail jelly to the wall.  But he really doesn’t help himself with his failure to understand what is and isn’t an acceptable thing to say and do as an MP.  Every day he tweets he says something inappropriate and people have warned him about his tweeting activities but he plods on regardless writing gaffe after gaffe and inevitably has attracted the attentions of the rabid Tory Twitterati and bloggers, some of whom have regular slots on national news channels and columns in newspapers, who will doubtless hound him until he resigns or something more exciting comes along.

David will be desperate for a proper politician to do something daft in the next day or two to take the heat off him, let’s hope they’re all on their best behaviour at least until the end of the week!

According to ConservativeHome, “Cast Iron” Dave has given a cast iron guarantee that while he is Prime Minister the UK will never join the Euro.

Let’s hope this cast iron guarantee is more of a cast iron guarantee than the cast iron guarantee that we’d get a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

Thanks god this isn’t a general election!

Remember to get your nominations in for this week’s Twat of the Week.  Either post your nomination, with a one-liner to explain why, in the comments or send your nomination by email.

The nominations are:

• John Terry – for cheating pale French on pale English
• Gordon Brown for being Gordon Brown
• David Cameron: Wussy toff of a political leader. He hasn’t done much to differentiate Tories from Labour and has no coherent or strong policies. Wants to emulate Obama instead of Thatcher
• George Papandreou: Won’t leave the Euro, despite the pain his countrymen are feeling. Just another Euro-socialist waiting for trouble.
• News of the World for trying to undermine the best England captain we had in a long time in world cup year.
• The Sports Minister [John Sutcliffe] for putting pressure on the FA to sack the best captain we had in a long time, but said nothing when John Presscott shagged his secretary.
• Prof Phil Jones for contributing to global warming by having his bum on fire.

Voting will close lunchtime tomorrow.

Just 3 months ago 41% of people believed in man-made climate change, now only 26% believe.  38% believe that climate change is not proven to be man-made when 3 months ago only 32% held that opinion.  Three months ago 8% of people thought man-made climate change was environmentalist propaganda, that figure has now risen to 10%.

Worryingly, the number of people who think climate change is not happening at all has gone up from 15% three months ago to 25%.  I say worryingly because the climate is changing, just as it has for billions of years!

Overall, this is excellent news.  The wheels are falling off the global warming wagon as more and more people see through the lies, dishonesty and propaganda.

Terry Pratchett has a rare form of Alzheimers and wants to shuffle off the mortal coil on his own terms, in a chair in his garden listening to music taking an overdose of painkillers with alcohol.  And why not?

He said he detests the idea that the government can choose whether you live or die but accepts that they have a duty to protect vulnerable people and so he proposes a tribunal that will decide on whether a person can choose to die or not.

My uncle died a few years ago after cruelly being kept alive for about a decade.  He had Huntington’s which is superficially similar to alzheimers and parkinsons but it doesn’t cause dementia, it just renders the body useless.  By the time my uncle died he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink, couldn’t control his bladder or bowels. He was kept alive for years in this state – his body didn’t work but his mind did.  He must have gone insane, there’s no way the human mind could cope.

If you kept an animal alive in that state you would probably be prosecuted by the RSPCA for animal cruelty so why is it not considered cruelty to do it to a human?

People should be allowed to make living wills while they are still of sound mind setting out the exact circumstances in which they would like to be put out of their misery.  The law needs to be changed to allow people to control their own ultimate destiny and to allow friends and relatives to help them do so.  The euthanasia tribunal idea is a good one and it should be coupled with a legal definition of quality of life, making it unequivocally clear when it is kinder to put someone down, to use the veterinary term.

My uncle shouldn’t have been kept alive for all those years with no quality of life and I would hope that someone would do the honourable thing and bump me off if ever I was in a similar position.

p.s. In case anyone is wondering, my dad didn’t get Huntingtons and it can’t skip a generation so I can’t get it.

Send me your nominations for this week’s Twat of the Week award by Friday lunchtime, ready for voting on Saturday.

Either email me or leave a comment with your nomination.

A one-liner to explain your nomination would be useful.

The first Twat of the Week, as nominated and voted for by the public, is …

Andrew “There’s cruelty in Englishness” Marr!

Glaswegian Marr’s racial slur against the English in his Sunday morning politics programme last week has resulted in many complaints to the BBC and now the first Twat of the Week award of 2010.

Andrew Marr, you’re a racist, a second-rate presenter and – officially – a twat.

The poll will close Monday so get voting!

If he wins, life will be unbearable for those of us who can’t stand the tantrum-throwing, anti-English, second rate Scottish tennis player.

The BBC will devote its entire schedule to the life and times of Andy Murray, the Sun will lead the campaign for him to be given a knighthood, No Mandate Brown will declare a “Murray Day” public holiday in England to celebrate.

But there is still hope.  Using the power of positive thought we could influence the result.  Send out positive thoughts of Andy Murray crashing to a humiliating defeat throughout the day and it could make the difference.  It works for Uri Geller!

Alternatively, there’s always the tried and tested voodoo doll idea.

The guidelines are, unusually for a British government department, quite sensible.  They are the product of the distilled wisdom of experts from the DfT, motorist groups and the police.  There’s no point classifying a settlement with 20 houses spread out over a 2 mile radius as a village because it clearly isn’t.  And there is no point putting in a speed limit that tens of thousands of drivers think is too slow because it will be ignored and the police won’t be able to enforce it.

But this doesn’t seem to have occurred to the highways people at Shropshire Council who have gold plated the DfT’s guidelines and define a village as 20 houses in a settlement, regardless of whether they front onto the road or not and have a policy of applying a speed limit at or below the mean average speed.  They also ignore completely the guidance put in on behalf of the police that says if the speed limit is being dropped below the mean average speed that engineering solutions must be put in place to force drivers to reduce their speed because the police won’t be able to police it.

Now all this is well and good as long as the council are honest about it but they aren’t.  When objections are made to these spurious speed limit reductions, they are considered by the parish council for the “village” in question.  A traffic officer for the council submits a report to councillors countering the objections but the traffic officers in Shropshire Council are lying to the councillors in their reports to cover up the fact that the “village” they are talking about isn’t actually a village – a pretty fundamental consideration when they are debating a proposal under the Village Speed Limit initiative.

Rather than repeat myself, here is the complaint I have sent tonight to one of the traffic officers who has been lying to councillors: