Out of touch with my banjo.

I decided not to take my lap top to Los Angeles and as I don't have a 'smart phone' – just a regular mobile/cell –  I was 'out of touch.' I was out of touch for all the time I was there. I could have used the computer at the house where I was staying but hot mail didn't think it was me when I used it so they wanted to send me a text. That would have been okay if I'd have been in Yiggieland*, which is there my phone works, but I wasn't in Yiggieland I was in La La Land**.

The first thing I discovered was that I didn't know my wife's cell phone number in Yiggieland; it was in my address book on my mobile; I hadn't bothered to remember it didn't even know any of the numbers – I know it now. Why? Because I had to. In my head I have all the numbers I had to remember – all the PINs, my national insurance number from Yiggie, mine and my wife's social security numbers from America, bank account numbers, sort codes and the rest of the access numbers, favourite name of first pet, mother's maiden name and the rest.

It got me thinking – if we never have to remember numbers and other things we save to machines maybe we will stop being good at it. Now you may ask why we want to remember those things for when we can have it done for us with the fine fine super fine technology of today and you may be right but if we get out of the habit of having to learn and remember things our brains may turn into grey matter – well they are already grey matter but you know what I mean.

People will have to think for us; people being the people who make the computers, invent the programmes, apps and the other stuff. They will be the only people who speak the special language and be able to read it too and the rest of us (well you, I will be dead by then) will have to believe what they say. Just like when only the church people could read and the plebs had to believe what they said. This is why they didn't really want the plebs to be able to read – just like these days when they (the magic 'they' who rule us) don't really want the plebs to be educated.

So I did a bit of work in Los Angeles and the other things I had to do by visiting my old haunts – Chili Johns, The Farmers' Market – and pick up my banjo which I had left with a friend.

I wasn't sure if the banjo had go as a 'special' item or not, on the flight back, so I decided to get it packed properly and checked it in and the greatest news is that there is no story about it getting broken or smashed to smithereens and there is the picture to prove it at the top of the page. And if you want to hear my banjo and me playing on some of the tracks copy and paste this http://tinyurl.com/bpyerf2

* Yiggieland - England

** La La Land - Los Angeles. 

Oh by the way. The other good thing about my trip was that I could get a decent cup of coffee and here I am drinking it in Chili Johns.

Socialised Medicine

Well my mother died sixteen years ago today – December 19th; it doesn't seem that long ago and I came over here to Los Angeles the following year.


I personally know of a few people who read this; my friend Jim is in Canada raising money for his film, my friend Jeffo is in Florida, my brother is somewhere in Afghanistan and another friend is in Wales – Dave.


There are lots of other people who read it but I don't know them; they exceeded all expectations in November and the numbers have gone down a bit for December but they are from all over the world – well the northern hemisphere as I haven't seen much from down under either from New Zealand or Australia.

Jim wrote in his blog that he was in or near the coldest part in the world; Jeffo wouldn't say that living in Florida would he and I have noticed that the UK has a lot of snow at the moment so I hope my babies drive carefully; my brother in Afghanistan is probably the coldest of them all; he is in a twenty foot container with bunk beds and he says it is freezing his knackers off.


Here it was seventy five today.


So good wishes to you all.

The last time I wrote in here I got a few facts wrong about the health care debate; the senate won't need two thirds majority to get this stage through; I knew it beforehand and I don't know why I wrote it but they just need sixty votes to prevent a filibuster but my prediction about the USA never getting universal health care still stands.


Now let me give you an expression which the good people of America know and which I'll bet very few people in Britain have even heard; that expression is 'socialised medicine.' I'll type it again 'Socialised Medicine!'

Socialised Medicine is what the people of America call the health care system which is used in the UK and Canada; I would think the Canadians have heard it, because of their proximity to the USA, but I'd never heard it till I came here; I had never heard the expression 'Black Irish' till I came here either but that's another story!

In the late forties when President Harry Truman tried to introduce a national health service to America the opposition got hold of a Madison Avenue advertising copy writer to come up with a frightening phrase and Socialised Medicine is what they came up with; so it's about as real as a Ploughman's Lunch; both invented by Mad Men!!

All – or should I say – most of my friends are to the left but even my most extreme left wing friends in America do not quite understand the free health service of the UK; some of them know a lot about it but the propaganda here tends to conjure up an image of a government run body with long dark green corridors where the patients wait for days to get long blunt needles stuck into their tiny babies' arms by unqualified politicians.

Maybe they think the people in the UK have to go to the doctors with some kind of book of food stamps to prove that they qualify to join the queue but no.

People have their own doctors which they choose themselves; the doctors like you to be in their catchment area, it's true, as Ronald Reagan said, but do you know why? Because the doctors in the UK after they've finished their morning surgery (called office visits in American) they go to the houses of their patients who are too sick to leave their houses.


In America if you are too sick to go to the doctors there is an answer phone, when you call the doctor, which says 'hang up and dial 911 if this is urgent' – that is the equivalent of 999 in the UK.

Nobody in the UK ever knows how much anything costs as it is picked up by the NHS and if you are nowhere near home you can pop in to a local doctor for treatment; if you don't have your NHS medical card with you they ask you for your date of birth and that is that.

The NHS gets paid for out of taxes but let me squash a myth here and now; I pay more tax here than I would in Britain.

If you live in a large conurbation, like various parts of London, you may have to wait for a while for elective surgery but not if you live in a remote area; you are allowed to travel to those remote areas, by the way, if you want to jump the queue.


On the BBC World Service the other day they interviewed people in various countries about their health service. I can't remember how much maternity leave the girl in Britain qualified for but the girl in the USA qualified for twenty weeks; TWENTY WEEKS!! Can you believe it – unfortunately that was without pay.

In Britain you get paid for your maternity leave; if you are really interested you can look it up.


Another story I picked up on the world service programme was about a woman who had cancer in the USA; she hadn't quite qualified for insurance from her employer so she couldn't get any treatment when she found out; eventually the insurance kicked in and she was treated and the treatment cost $190,000; she had to pay $38,000 towards this as the insurance didn't cover the full cost so she was left with the bill.

She did what lots of people here have to do; she went bankrupt.

So here's a phrase that people in the UK might not have heard which is quite common in America – Medical Bankruptcy.


So there are two phrases that the good people of Britain are learning today - Socialised Medicine, which is what the Yanks call the British National Health Service, and Medical Bankruptcy, which is what you get in America for not earning enough money and getting sick; and by the way America; Yank is what the people in the UK and Ireland call you; in a likeable kind of way, of course, as they are fond of you but they really should feel sorry for you for the way your government treats you.

And there we are – my little message for today; oh by the way we have health insurance provided by SAG, the actor's Union, and Aetna, provided by my wife's company which costs us a few hundred a month.

Don't get me wrong – America is a great place to be; but to use a phrase known in Britain – a great place to be healthy.