Conor’s Bandon Blog

The scandal that is the non-vaccination using BCG of children in Cork could have far-reaching implications for the health of many people under the age of 30. Both employees of the then Southern Health Board and the political appointees to the board may have had a say in implementing this negligent policy and continuing to allow it to occur since the 1970′s. It is clear that the health of Cork children is considered less important than that of children from elsewhere in the country.

I’ve just been informed that budget was put aside to deal with this in 2004 and was then re-allocated. In the interests of accuracy I have decided to contact the HSE under the Freedom of information act to find out who, why and when decisions were made in this area since the 1970′s.

Below are my questions. Please add to them or improve on them in the comments section and I’ll put together a combined list and send it to the HSE. It’ll be interesting to see if there is any attempt made to delay the answers until after May 17th.

1. On what dates was the decision made and then implemented to stop providing BCG routinely to newborn babies in the Cork region years ago?
2. Provide the names of all the senior individuals (medical, administrative, consultant, board members) involved in the making of that decision
3. Provide the names of all past or present TDs, Senators or Councillors who were on the Southern Health Board when that decision was made
4. Did the board authorise that decision? If so, provide the names of all members of that board
5. Provide the names of all past or present TDs, Senators or Councillors who were on the Southern Health Board since the decision
6. Confirm whether the provision of BCG as a matter of routine was agreed to be re-introduced at any point since then, on what dates and by whom
7. Confirm whether that NEW decision was overturned, for what reason, by whom and when
8. Confirm that BCG shots are available in some locations nationally on demand and list the places where there is no waiting list
9. Confirm that residents of Cork can avail of these BCG shots and provide contact information for arranging these shots

If you are not a geek, stop reading now. Factory Joe (aka Chris Messina) did a Tweet earlier pointing to a theme for WordPress. I just checked it out. I am so in awe of this person.

It is a Commodore 64 Command Line Interface to a blog.

Try typing last, next, current, help or cat

Someone somewhere please please do a ZX Spectrum version of this.

UPDATE 1: Ach, just realised Chris must have seen it on Boing Boing.

Courtesy of Jonathan Hill. Get your county into the top spot in Monopoly! It looks like the entire population of Leitrim and Roscommon has voted with 296 and 258 votes respectively. Cork floundering with 31 and Kilkenny with 26.

Note to Hasbro – maybe get a custom PollDaddy widget created that we could all put on our blogs? It’s viral baby!

If you are one of my many non-technical readers you may have heard me and others mention things like RSS and words like “subscribe” and you may have wondered what it is all about. Well the lovely people over at The Common Craft Show have put together a great 3.5 minute video called “RSS in Plain English” which explains it all. If you check more than one or two sites/blogs per day to see if they have any updates then you need to watch this video and save yourself hassle.

Click To Play

NOTE: If the video/audio stutters a lot just pause it, wait a minute and then start again.

This mightn’t be a big deal to most people but it’s a huge deal to me. If my parents hadn’t got me a ZX Spectrum in 1982, I wouldn’t have had the life I’ve had. No exaggeration. Every single college and career choice I’ve made stems from the skills I learned on that machine, which I still have (the machine, not the skills ).

Sure 50% of the time I was playing Jet Set Willy and Sabre Wulf but on the Speccy I learned BASIC, Forth and Z80 assembler. I also learned the basic architecture of computers and basic electronics circuits.

I still crank up emulators on my PCs, phone and Palm and still get annoyed over the bugs in the games I wrote!

Thanks to my parents for realising how important computer skills might be to me and to Sir Clive Sinclair for having the clarity of vision to create the ZX series of computers. I’m actually surprised he didn’t come up with the OLPC as it is right in line with his thinking.

Happy Anniversary Speccy!

p.s and just in time, the 1988 Edition of the Your Sinclair Rock n Roll Years has just been released!

UPDATE 1: Colin Woodcock has also just released a Special 25th Anniversary Edition of the wonderful ZXF online magazine.

I cannot understand why Christy O’Sullivan thinks he’ll get a vote from me. Here is a guy shoe-horned in by FF at a national level who sends me flyers with absolutely no information on them about who he is, what he believes in, where he lives, what he has accomplished as a politician or why I should vote for him.

And of course his website doesn’t load!

Inserting this nobody over a well known local politician like Alan Coleman is a huge mistake by FF. I don’t know how well Coleman would have done in this climate but at least he has a known reputation.

I will not vote for anonymous candidates from any party.

As a lot of you know, you can get a Digital version of RTÉ (including Widescreen) on Sky Digital and NTL. However you must have a Sky/NTL subscription to see it. Many people, including myself, believe this is fundamentally wrong as we already support RTÉ through the mandatory TV licence.

Please sign the petition from Brian Greene demanding that RTE make digital broadcasts of their programming available for “free”. If you are a blogger, consider adding the badge in support.

Whilst I’m at it, maybe someone can tell me why I was talking to RTE about Digital Terrestrial TV in 1998 and we still don’t have it? RTÉ is another taxpayer funded organisation in dire need of a good kicking.

The annual drag racing competition on the main Clon road in Old Chapel is on tomorrow. Always loud, always fast and always really well organised. We’ll be popping down for a few minutes until the younger ones start bawling.