First Aid ~ Everyone should know it.

One of the things that I have found very useful in life is my First Aid training.

Both for helping others & knowing what’s happening to me, it has proved invaluable.

One of the strange ways it helped me was a few years ago when I suffered a traumatic injury. Whilst in hospital I started shaking, convulsing & collapsed. This would’ve scared the crap out of me, but I knew that I was going into shock, and I knew this was my body’s way of shutting down to protect me by concentrating on my vital systems.

It helped me understand what was going on, and why certain things had to be done. I was actually very calm in a situation where I would’ve otherwise panicked & possibly made things worse.

It has also helped when my son has been ill or injured. I’ve either known what to do, or understood why his body was doing what it was doing. Either way it helped me stay calm by giving me an understanding of the situation. It’s not knowing things that scares most people.

I highly recommend going on a course. If you’re lucky you could get your company to send you on one & maybe get a little extra cash for being a work First Aider. It’s win/win.

Courses are supplied by the UK’s leading first aid providers, although other courses are available (I use St John Ambulance). When I had my first course there was a practical exam at the end, but now the trainees are observed during the training course and there’s no pressure of a final exam.

Click the logos below for more information:

Thank … God?

Okay… there are a lot of links in this blog entry. They go some way to showing what is involved, and who is involved, in parts of the following tale…. It is quite a short write up, considering how deep I could take it… so please bear with me…

The Scene…

A lorry has a tyre blow out on a major busy road in a hilly area of the country.

The trailer slides across the Tarmac & hits a car.

The car is smashed off of the road and it ends up upside down at the roadside.

A little girl inside is seriously injured.

In seconds, the traffic has stopped & other road users are phoning in the accident. They use mobile phones that have been developed over time by countless thousands of engineers who can trace telephone technology back to people like Bell and Marconi – or in this case, Dr Martin Cooper of Motorola with the first mobile phone.

These engineers went to school, college & university to study. They were taught by countless more lecturers & teachers who spent their lives learning their vocational skills and also attending schools, colleges, universities etc to enable them to go on and educate others. The same is said of the people who trained these instructors and… well, it goes on and on. Thousands of people lead to the witnesses of the crash being able to phone emergency services.

Of course, the emergency services couldn’t be contacted if there was no telephone infrastructure in place, and also if there was no way to generate electricity to power the systems that allow for the phones to charge and for the entire grid of communications to operate.

Again we have engineers, scientists and the initial inventors to thank for harnessing the power of electricity, into making it possible to give all the houses & businesses the ability to power their equipment… and go in all of the cars, lorries, boats, aircraft and so on… that all need batteries to start/run their engines, motors & electrical systems. And again there are the instructors, lecturers etc that teach these skills to enable this resource to develop and operate safer & more reliably day after day…. and the people who taught the people to teach…

Thinking about it, those teachers need somewhere to teach… so we must remember architects, builders, plumbers (ooh, the Romans for their work on plumbing), electricians, carpenters, roofers etc… and all the people who taught them… and those that taught those that taught them… etc.

Oh Hell, mustn’t forget the workers (and those that died progressing their areas of employment, working to provide for our prior generations, and those to come) in foundries, mills, mines, quarries who supplied the materials to build the schools… And don’t forget the people who taught them…. and here we go again….

So far we have a witness calling for help over a mobile phone, and someone from the emergency services taking that call & passing it on the the relevant rescue services… and we have thousands and thousands of people who helped make that call take place…. So many people who are each owed something for what they brought to the table on this day, so to speak.

Wiltshire Air Ambulance

Rescue and emergency services head out to the crash site. The rescuers included countless Police to divert traffic & control the crash scene for starters. Then the ambulances & fire engines come along. Paramedics & firefighters to cut the victims from the wreck & give emergency aid to get them stable for the urgent ambulance helicopter flight to an airport so that the girl can be transferred to a faster aircraft to get to the hospital.

I've worked on this aircraft at GAMA - I'm part of this huge chain that helped.

Think of the technology, the training, the skills and dedication involved in all of this! Even down to the rescue services “Jaws of Life“… the hydraulic cutters used to remove the roofs off of cars to allow people to be removed from them safely…

Heck, we need to thank the ancient Greeks & Chinese for their initial work in hydraulics, and Blaise Pascal (1600’s) for his work in modern hydraulic principles, that eventually lead to generations of teachers training generations of engineers to eventually come up with, and make “The Jaws of Life”.

All of those emergency vehicles have engines that developed from steam engines to internal combustion engines… We owe Karl Benz for some of the first practical motor cars… Nikolaus Otto is to thank for coal/gas burning reciprocal engines.

Then there’s the gas turbine engine in the air ambulance helicopter… this goes back to Bernoulli and more practically, Sir Frank Whittle… Oh yeah, the helicopter goes back to Leonardo da Vinci… and the modem father is Igor Sikorsky.

The technology that went into making all of those car, lorry, helicopter systems etc… is owed to an impossible number of inventors, scientist, scholars, boffins…. teachers, foundry workers… and on and on….

Almost forgot Babbage & the calculating machine he created, or the first simple mechanical computer of Thomas Fowler in 1840! … or the many variations of the abacus… or the efforts at Bletchley Park with Alan Turing and Tommy Flowers… regarded as the fathers of modern computing… Without this line of thought & engineering, the computer reliant vehicles (ground and air) would not function… or be able to be designed…

Do I have to go into how many people have helped progress THIS side of technology! MILLIONS! Don’t forget all of those ancient mathematicians that developed theories, rules, formulas etc that allowed ANY engineering to take place… Archimedes, Aristotle, Pythagoras… some of maths many fathers…

So yeah… The little girl is cut from the car & her condition is stabilised. She is put in the helicopter & flown to the hospital (by trained pilots who have spent years training etc and so on… you know what I mean by now…).

She arrives at the trauma centre, which was an idea first established in the 1960’s by R Adams Cowley, and is rushed into surgery (developed from around the 1500’s by countless scientists and researchers in medicine)… and I think if you have half a brain cell, that you’ll know where this is heading….

Trained staff, technology, inventors, scientists, infrastructure, upper tier staff, lower tier staff, buildings, services…. allowing the paramedics, doctors, nurses & other specialists to save the little girls life, using equipment that has been developed over generations of medical and non medical research, by people whose names you can’t help but recognise, including the likes of Florence Nightingale, Marie Curie, Hannah Myrick, Louis Pasteur, Alexis Carrel and Henry Dakin, Joseph Lister…. the list is endless…. or at least it may as well be, because every branch of medicine or medical research was generated from a different branch, or developed into others…

Research has expanded and helped us… and with that expansion comes the need for more people to teach, to learn, to think, to progress…

Millions of people and their ancestors all helped

The above list doesn’t touch the surface of all of those that were involved in that one little girls life being saved, but as you can see, the human count in this pyramid that ends with that little girls life contains millions of unsung heroes. People who worked just to find answers. Some were imprisoned & forced to work. Some were slaves, some were kings & queens… All walks of life through the ages.

And then there’s the press who interview the parents after the girl has been saved…. and the parents… they turn to the camera and say into the microphone…

“Thank God our daughter survived…. We knew he was looking down on her all the time…”

No mention of the Doctors, the nurses, the pilots, the Police, the rescue and emergency services, the witnesses at the scene… let alone the millions in history that allowed it to all play out….

Even if you are religious, then sure, thank your God, but don’t forget the physical people who did all the hands on work.

If you do want to thank ‘God’….. Don’t forget one tiny little thing…

…Who do you think allowed the crash to happen in the first place?

Yes, you guessed it....

You live on the shoulders of millions who lived before you.

Don’t ever forget that.

Oh, and before you go and say “It’s all a test God has set us“… then please read THIS…

Traffic problem and road deaths – SOLVED

Okay… this is just a thought – It is not 100% figured out, and to be honest, I would be pretty much against some aspects of it – BUT I was just musing over something that MIGHT be the better good for the greater many for the future….

Feel free to add constructive comments!

So anyway… the roads are getting clogged up with too much traffic. Motorways are reduced to a dribble and often just stop during rush hours. Sometimes it is due to roadworks, sometimes due to accidents, and all compounded by pure volume of traffic.

That gives 3 focal points…. Roadworks, Accidents, volume of traffic.

All of these add to pollution in a big way, after all if a car takes longer to get somewhere due to traffic slowing it down, then it is burning fuel and not getting anywhere… Also, lots of cars = lots of pollution.

To reduce roadworks we need to reduce the number of vehicles on the road. The question is which ones do we remove? The answer to this will reflect on the accident rate on the roads…

To reduce accidents we need to remove as many drivers from the road that are likely to cause problems… and by reducing accidents we take a huge load off of the emergency services and hospitals (frees up the Police, Ambulances, Doctors, Nurses, Fire service etc…) and we keep the roads moving more freely due to less road traffic accident caused jams… This saves a lot of tax payers money allowing it to be routed in other directions…. one of those directions would be public transport… but more on that in a moment.

To help reduce the amount of drivers on the road, a much tougher driving test is required. Much, much tougher. This will keep a lot of the drivers off of the road that are dangerous. The less able drivers, the careless, the worriers, hesitater’s, the heavy on the gas drivers etc, all of these would get a taste of a cull. I’d even say that in this day and age the smoothness of a persons driving could be judged – after all a smoother drive gives greater fuel economy and less emissions – and also a smoother drive is a safer drive.

This would leave a lot of people stranded with nothing but frankly shitty public transport to rely on.True, one option could be lift sharing – and that would help save people money by sharing the fuel costs. Not a bad option really, once you see how many cars there are on the road in the morning with only one person in.

Back to public transport though – I had to travel to my work place by train recently as my car was being serviced… it cost over £30 for a return ticket…I had to get up 45 minutes earlier to catch a train… the journey took over an hour longer than my drive and I finally arrived home 1 hour later than usual…. The next day I hired a car and that worked out cheaper than a train ticket!

So how can this dire public transport be improved? I’d envisage more and better bus services… subsidised taxis, Heck, why not mini buses more frequently than the current buses? Who knows? Just SOMETHING!!!

With more people being forced to use public transport there would be more money being spent on travel – so prices could be reduced (finally!). Some of the money saved on emergency services and roadworks could be funnelled into improving the public transport system. In fact with less cars on the road, a regular stopping or fast track coach system could be set up on the motorways (after all, some places aren’t near train stations).

It may even get to a point where unlike my experience with public transport, it might be better for me to use public transport – Cheaper, faster, cleaner….. I can dream!!!

The more people that use public transport, the better it would get due to the cash injection (it would HAVE to get). So there you have it – a rickety theory on reducing the number of cars on the road and at the same time saving us and the Government money from areas that can have spending reduced (the reduction of road traffic accidents & road repairs due to lighter wear and tear etc), whilst at the same time reducing carbon emissions, and road deaths!

One point here… If I was one of the people who were caught in “the cull” then I’d be pretty annoyed… BUT I’d hope that an infrastructure was in place that would alleviate the pain and suffering that losing a car would give me. In fact I’d hope that if a scheme like this ever took off, that some people would simply PREFER to ditch their cars due to a much improved alternative… (stretch your imagination!)

Maybe, as a great deal of accidents are Motorway situated, my theory could be to just make a tough test for people to pass prior to travelling on the motorways. That would mean people could still have access to cars for local travels, but keep the main motorways clearer… hey… it’s just some random thoughts here!

Yes, it is a dodgy theory with many holes in it, but it is just the bones of a discussion that other people might look at and carry on with….

A quick review…

Right…by popular demand here is a run down of the last few months…well…yearish…
I had a plan. Chris and I wanted kids, and I wanted that to happen away from Portsmouth. I wanted to move to my home town area (Fleet/Farnborough), as it has better schools, hospitals and general environment (like TREES and OPEN SPACE!!!!).

The plan was that we move to Farnborough, I carry on working in Portsmouth (travel daily) until I get a job up in Farnborough area. Once we were settled, we would try for a baby.

What happened was this: Whilst still living in Portsmouth I was doing some work for my then employer at Southampton Airport. An aircraft had some propeller damage and I was sent to assess it. I got chatting with the guy who was there with the aeroplane and mentioned my plan. He said his company was hiring, and mentioned that another company (based on Farnborough Airport) was also hiring. I arranged an interview at the Farnborough company. 1 month late and I was working on Farnborough Airport (working on Air Ambulance aircraft and Executive light aircraft).

Right…so the plan was working, but a little bit out of order, but hey…living in Portsmouth and traveling to Farnborough would just be like living in Farnborough and traveling to Portsmouth. It wouldn’t be for long anyway….we’d have a house soon, and then start the family.

After 3 months I had passed my probation period, so put our house on the market, as the job was now solid. After getting some interest in our house we started trying for a family. It only takes a few months to buy and sell a house, so there was no issue with timing.

Some light hearted inflight entertainment to take the edge off of this blog post. One of my early photoshops.

BEALES estate agents and Country Wide Property solicitors….LEAVE WELL ALONE….The house move was taking far too long…we lost the first house we wanted to move into back in November as our chain was taking too long. Back in November we were told…TWO WEEKS AND YOU’LL BE IN. It took so long that we lost that first house. Luckily we found a second one within a week. REMEMBER, they said it would only take a couple of weeks to sort everything out, well it is now March….we don’t have a clue as to what is going on.

We were told in January that we would complete the sale on the end of the week. As such, I bought new beds and furniture to be delivered to our new house for mid January. I also bought a futon for the spare room, which I took straight away, as we would use this for few days until the move.

Nearer to the move date I cut up the old bed and gave my brother in law the furniture (still no thanks there, but that’s another story). Directly after cutting the bed up I received a phone call…The move was off. Lies down the chain. The move was pushed on a few days…then a week…then weeks. We have now had to re-advertise the house as Chris is now 33 weeks pregnant, and we still have no idea of a move date. Worse still, since Jan, we have been sleeping on nothing but a small futon, living in a house of boxes.

Other news….It looks as if baby was conceived on the Bisley weekend where we both won trophies for our shooting. A good weekend all round then!!!

Now I find myself still in Portsmouth, sleeping on a rock hard futon with my 33 week pregnant wife. I drive on average 3 hours a day, spending over £300 per month on things I wouldn’t need if we had moved already (Fuel, storage bills etc). Chris is tired because of the pregnancy, and I am tired due to the hours I work and the commute. We wake at 5am to feed the pets, eat breakfast and get me out of the door for a 7am start in Farnborough. I get home (on a good day) at around 7pm…so we don’t get to spend a lot of time together awake.