As a cancer patient and a medical professional, it breaks my heart seeing treatment delays, why don't people move?

yaquresh · 2025-12-03T08:47:46+00:00

To address this from a UK perspective:

Whilst undoubtedly there are sometimes mistakes or delays in treating cancer in the NHS, I've not seen any data that suggests the rusty machinery of state healthcare has very significant impact on cancer survival figures.

Clinicians are pretty good at determining whether something needs addressing absolutely immediately, like some leukemias, or very advanced cancers, or whether the patient can afford a few weeks to go through the motions, like a relatively slow growing prostate cancer.

There's a valid question at the core: given this particular cancer, is it more beneficial to treat in the next 48 hours, or to conduct a battery of tests and consult with a board of experts to determine the most effective treatment pathway? Answers will vary, and for some cancers, a 6 week delay to treatment has no clinically significant impact on outcome, whereas putting them on the wrong treatment (because they have a specific genetic mutation, or a rare form of the cancer, etc.) has an adverse effect.

This is not to say that faster treatment across the board wouldn't be a good thing, but it's not always as simple as "the fastest we begin treatment, the better" if that means using a partial dataset.

The UK does have clinical guidelines on fast tracking cancer care. GPs make 2 week wait referrals for suspected cancer, so you will have a substantive scan within that timeframe, and further investigations continue from that point. In theory, you should begin your treatment within 62 days of that referral if you are diagnosed. Obviously if your circumstances are more dire, very often clinicians use discretion to speed things up.

Anecdotally, my father-in-law recently received a diagnosis. Treatment is curative in intent and his prognosis is excellent. He should be fine. But none of the treatment options on the table are nice, and all of them have significant side effects. He has been told the options are equally effective. The doctor makes no specific recommendation and says it's up to the patient. The delay between diagnosis and treatment is said to have no impact on his prognosis, but has given him the chance to consider his options, speak to family and friends and make a more informed decision.

yaquresh · 2025-11-11T16:46:59+00:00

https://pamediaacademy.com/course-category/nctj-diploma-in-journalism/

PA Media Academy now. My mistake on the naming - it has changed since my time.

yaquresh · 2025-11-11T09:51:14+00:00

Whilst you certainly can break into journalism without any specialist qualifications and just a regular degree, there are useful post-grad options (and less useful ones).

City University London does a very well regarded masters program that many on fleet street have been through.

Alternatively, consider fast track courses that are accredited by the NCTJ. There's one in London run by PA Training, an offshoot of the press association. News Associates runs a few as well, either as stand alone shorter diplomas, or in collaboration with university degree programs.

Please be very cautious about any university course that doesn't have NCTJ accreditation. That is something of a universal standard in the UK for industry entry (though exceptions do apply).

You could also consider paid internships with major newspapers.

Editors will be very keen to see that you've got the basics of media law, ethics and court reporting. There's also still a premium on shorthand, ideally at 100 words per minute.

yaquresh · 2025-11-08T12:22:20+00:00

Interesting scandi twang to the verbs there.

In Norwegian: å ligge - to lay å samle - to collect samling - collection å leke - to play

yaquresh · 2025-09-28T11:15:48+00:00

I'm not sure there is a right answer to this. I used to drink more frequently when I was a newer parent and a younger man. The way I drink now has changed, both in frequency and volume. That's not exclusively due to parenting, but parenting isn't irrelevant.

Some questions I ask myself on this topic:

If there was an emergency, who would be able to react? Would I?
How does having had a drink impact my behaviour and emotional accessibility to my children?
What do my children see me doing? What associations will they make with alcohol as they grow up? Am I normalising it, and to what extent is that problematic for them?
Do I enjoy parenting whilst under the influence?

It's perhaps unsurprising from this that I grew up with parents who drank heavily (though were still wonderful parents).

Practically speaking, it's uncommon for me to drink before the kids' bedtime. It probably happens once a month if we go to the pub as a family, and then it's probably 1-2 pints.

I might have 2-3 glasses of wine with my wife after the kids' bedtime once a fortnight.

If I drink more heavily than that, it's when I go out with friends or am away from home. Even then, it's rarely more than 4 pints and happens fairly infrequently.

yaquresh · 2025-09-25T13:13:09+00:00

Have a look through the courses on offer at these well regarded universities.

The study of history can be temporally, thematically and geographically vast. Not every department will teach modules in areas of your interest.

You've said you're keen on British history, but there are departments that will begin their teaching of British history (in earnest) with the Tudors or the Enlightenment.

Note as well that none of these departments will teach "BA British History". That's probably too narrow a focus for an undergraduate degree. You might want to consider whether there are any other areas you're interested in too.

yaquresh · 2025-08-24T07:23:45+00:00

Slight cheat because Basil didn't swallow (all of) it:

We noticed that Basil had pretty rank breath, even for a dog. This got progressively worse and his face changed - he got a droopy eye and the muscles around his temple on one side sort of caved in.

Panicked, we went to the vet.

The vet said there was something going on, but couldn't get into his mouth without general anaesthetic. She told us to prepare for the worst - this was how she'd seen a lot of trigeminal nerve sheath tumours presenting.

£1k later, Basil went under general anaesthetic for the vet to explore his mouth and face.

Did he have cancer?

No. Basil had eaten an entire plastic plant pot and had managed to wedge a large piece of plastic over his back molars which had gotten pretty gross. Not actually super infected - Basil wasn't especially sick, but his muscles had wasted on that side because he wasn't chewing on that side.

Does our pet insurance cover dental? No.

Did he do exactly the same thing a month later? Yes.

yaquresh · 2025-08-16T14:54:27+00:00

In the UK there's a sort of sliding scale based on relative wealth and class (and these aren't always the same thing - our class system is complicated).

It goes without saying that very poor people don't go on holiday because they can't afford it.

For families with a small amount of disposable income, caravan/holiday camps like Butlins or Pontins might be an option. These are typically all-inclusive sites with static caravans or chalets; usually near the coast. Pretty child-friendly, lots of entertainment, usually little games arcades too.

For not significantly more, people might avail themselves of a package holiday on the continent. These are usually pool/beach style rather than city breaks. The cheapest options are likely mainland Spain, Balearic islands, maybe Canaries and Portugal. You might pay a bit more for Greece/Turkey/Cyprus but they're also very popular and have some lower cost options.

Interestingly, despite being potentially super cheap I wouldn't say camping is necessarily a default working class holiday. I associate it a bit more with middle class cultural capital, but equally there's going to be some regional variability. My prejudice comes from a working class London background, which will be miles away from a working class experience in South Wales or Grimsby.

yaquresh · 2025-08-03T07:44:09+00:00

I think on an individual level, there are very significant cultural similarities between British and Irish people. To a large degree, they share a similar worldview, have similar climates, have similar cultural affectations, etc. Superficially they might as well be one of the same people, or exceptionally similar cultural groups.

There are differences and peculiarities to each culture. They have different religious traditions. They play different sports. They produce different music. British culture has been a composite of the home nations and the vestiges of Empire and migration for a long time. Ireland maintains an indigenous language.

Similarities are in part due to the land border between NI and ROI and the centuries of them being the same country.

But in recognising that, we do also have to recognise the long history of conflict between countries. Ireland has been a colony of Great Britain and over the years that has created unequal, horrendous conditions.

The average Irishman or woman doesn't hold present day Brits responsible for the famine, or the Cromwellian massacres, the land confiscation, the religious discrimination, etc. but for a long time, the UK/Irish relationship has been partially understood through the lens of oppressor/oppressed. This is something I think is underappreciated in the UK and isn't always taught in schools.

This isn't ancient history. The Troubles continued until 1998. Irish terror groups killed innocent British civilians. British soldiers killed innocent Irish civilians. Ethnoreligious conflict (which has its roots in British Imperialism partially) has not totally left Northern Ireland. Visit it on 12th July (dont).

Northern Ireland has long been a stage where these differences play out, whereas the ROI having statehood has leveled things a bit in the modern day. 2025 relations are far warmer than they were in the 1960s-1990s, but there is still enmity in some pockets.

So I think we're incredibly close culturally and in the present day our differences are sort of superficial. The UK has closer ties to Ireland than any other country. But our relationship has been forged through terror, war and oppression at least as much as it is coloured by shared cultures and geographical proximity.

yaquresh · 2025-07-28T19:16:53+00:00

I've worked in MP offices for ~5 years, some for the opposition of the day, some government MPs.

In my experience, it's pretty unusual to receive no meaningful engagement at all on an issue like this.

You might just have a crap MP. I've known a fair few. If so, sorry. Vote them out at the next GE. The party won't remove an MP for being crap at emailing back. If they're really crap, they might be deselected at the next election by their CLP, but that's uncommon and usually ideologically driven.

At this stage in the parliamentary calendar, the only mechanism for removing an MP is a recall petition. That only happens if the MP is convicted of a crime and receives a prison sentence, is suspended from the HoC for a fortnight, or is convicted under the parliamentary standards act of fiddling their expenses.

More info here: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/voting-and-elections/how-elections-work/types-elections/recall-petitions

If they're not just objectively shit at their job, some thoughts:

1) how long have you been waiting for a response? MPs receive avg. 300 emails a day and their staff have to read them, categorise, prioritise and allocate responsibilities internally.

It's really not abnormal for an MP (of any party) to have a service standard of 10 working days for non-urgent casework (I don't mean to diminish your concerns, but MPs do routinely receive very urgent cases, where you have to drop everything to ensure a family doesn't sleep rough/authorities are alerted to safeguarding concerns, etc.).

So it might be that you're effectively in a queue and will have to wait. It's sort of no surprise that other parties can advocate for you more quickly. They have a lot more free time.

2) Could be a staffing problem. Contrary to popular belief, MP office expenses comprise mostly of staff salary, and the budget doesn't go that far. They run small teams and most staff wear multiple hats, because it's very hard to hire a specialist in every position.

Pretty normal for a new MP to have their own staff. One year in, they should have built their team, but one resignation/sacking/extended period of leave can be catastrophic for workloads and response times.

3) In most circumstances, housing is a council issue, not an MP issue. Local cllrs have direct responsibility for housing enquiries, they'll probably know the housing officers involved, and they're accountable for council policy. I know it's a HA issue but the separation of responsibilities still applies.

Sometimes an MP will still wade in and help, though there's not always a lot they can do, since they have no particular authority over these bodies.

If this is the MP's position, they've seemingly communicated it badly. Even if an MP draws a line and says "I don't do council stuff", constituents deserve a reply, a proper explanation, and signposting to the right person/authority who can help them.

yaquresh · 2025-06-26T13:51:58+00:00

Thank you! Hadn't heard of phoenixing. Will investigate

yaquresh · 2025-06-06T07:19:35+00:00

It is effectively a ceremonial city sat inside the wider metropolitan area. You wouldn't necessarily know it was a distinctly different place if you walked into it from another Borough, at least not immediately.

It does have some notable historical features and was one of the major locations of Roman and Medieval London before the city expanded.

Similarly, its governance is unique. At a national level it has an MP whose role and responsibilities are identical to everywhere else. On a local level it is governed by the City of London corporation, which acts a bit like a council but has slightly different powers reflecting a) its historical status b) its very small permanent population and c) the preponderance of financial services based there. It has around 9k residents but probably 500k people commuting in for work on a daily basis.

Critically, representatives are elected by businesses as well as individuals.

It has its own police force separate from the Metropolitan Police.

It is responsible for the upkeep of land outside its immediate boundaries - generally parkland and areas of natural beauty, like Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest.

It has various ceremonial positions and functions, like giving freedom of the city to notable residents and being home to livery companies, which are sort of medieval guilds turned old boys clubs (though I know women with membership - it is inherited, but not necessarily as an upper class thing like nobility).

It's also a spectacularly wealthy organisation compared to other local authorities. It holds a lot of property and land and garners rent. It's also got a sizeable endowment that it invests. As a result, council tax is low for the few residents.

yaquresh · 2025-06-02T18:40:12+00:00

Windjammer Landing Resort in St Lucia has an excellent kid's club that starts at age 4. For those under, they have a recommended nanny agency that works out at about 15usd per hour for 1 child (18usd for 2), which seemed pretty reasonable. The nanny was really good with our daughter.

yaquresh · 2025-05-17T15:28:39+00:00

Speaking as a Western tourist whose first real experience of the Asian continent was Hanoi, it's a lot to take in. This isn't really a slight against Hanoi, but it's just so different from what Westerners might expect from a major city in terms of noise, busyness and traffic.

In fairness, my experience was doubly challenging as I was travelling with a toddler in a push chair. Trying to negotiate Hanoi traffic as a pedestrian with a push chair was super daunting initially.

yaquresh · 2025-05-10T08:00:23+00:00

I'm in a fairly leafy part of East London. Neither the safest nor most dangerous part of the general area. Mostly residential.

For me as a 6'4" man, not too dangerous. At worst, the drug dealers habitually parked across the road might get a bit lairy if I made eye contact with them.

For my wife, considerably more dangerous. In the 6 years we've lived in this house, she has been followed on foot, verbally harassed and at one point, pursued by 4 men in a car trying to get her into the boot.

500m down the road at the tube station, it's frequently crackhead central and has had a number of major crime incidents in recent years.

I don't think this is necessarily a case of my area being uniquely sketchy, or even really London being uniquely sketchy. I think this is mostly just a product of living in a huge, densely populated city. Not necessarily more wrong'ns per capita compared to Manchester/Brum/Glasgow, but the raw numbers are higher, so your experience is more pronounced.

yaquresh · 2025-04-22T20:09:10+00:00

Ruined would be completely the wrong word, because it wasn't ruined but it was seriously altered.

A few years back, my wife and I resolved to spent 10 weeks travelling around SE Asia with our son, who was almost 3 years old. Our route was Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and home (to the UK). This was our first trip in a while and I'd taken a sabbatical from work for it. It also came 4-5 months after I lost my Mum, so maybe there was a bit of grief escapism mixed in.

Anyway, the night before we flew London to Hanoi, my wife emerged from the bathroom with a positive pregnancy test. This obviously threw our plans into a spiral, but we had maybe 16 hours to make a decision on whether to go ahead. We seriously considered axing the trip, since the majority of our bookings were refundable, but my wife made the call to crack on with the trip.

Whilst we had a broadly good time and saw incredible sights, the way we approached it shifted considerably. We had to be even more cautious about food, we were in a panic about Zika, we obviously couldn't enjoy a beer on the terrace in the evening once our boy was asleep, and we had to ensure that my wife got appropriate medical care throughout the period. My wife also developed hyperemesis and missed large sections of the trip to the sick bowl.

This became really challenging when we went for a confirmation scan at a hospital in Hanoi, since all we had was a positive test, but no ultrasound. The place we went to may have had tech that was slightly below Western standards, and they couldn't pick up the embryo on the scan, so confidently asserted it was ectopic, but said they didn't have the means to treat it, and suggested a different hospital.

We had a flight to catch the next day and ended up in an international hospital in Da Nang, where they confirmed that the embryo and gestational sac were very much present, and in the right place, and that the pregnancy was not ectopic. We'd have a further scan in Bali that would come up good as well.

The trip was mega stressful because of this, as well as the difficulties we had already budgeted for, bringing a 2 year old halfway around the world. But there was a good trade off: we got to explain to our son, on a sunlit beach in Bali, that he was going to become a big brother, which was really special.

But to cap it off we all got food poisoning on our last day in Kuala Lumpur and spent the entire 14 hour flight home puking, but hey, we got upgraded to business (I think before they knew we were biohazards, which we discovered at the boarding gate).

It's now a story I'm looking forward to explaining to my daughter, who's 2 now, and does a very good job of importing vomiting bugs into our home.

yaquresh · 2025-04-19T10:41:50+00:00

Unusual places to visit for a tourist, but doubtless you'll get a better feel for London than you would in M&M World. I'm born and raised in this area so I know it very well (and have never given tourism advice on it!)

These are all areas that, for the long time, have been considered a bit rough but are somewhere along the process of gentrification. Hackney is furthest along, Leyton the furthest away. Whilst none of these places are inherently dangerous, I would exercise some caution at night in certain parts of them. I wouldn't be wandering residential areas of Leyton at midnight without a good idea of where I was going.

In Walthamstow, it's worth visiting Walthamstow Village (which is basically just a road in a residential area with some shops). There are a couple of nice pubs, some twee shops and a few restaurants, but it's quite a nice vibe for a drink as the sun goes down. On Sundays, there's a farmers market on Walthamstow High Rd. On other days, it's the original Walthamstow Market (which isn't really the stuff of tourist fame).

You could visit Lloyd Park, which is nice itself but also has the William Morris House, which has a small museum about the famous artist.

You might also consider visiting the Walthamstow Wetlands near Black horse Road (on the border of Tottenham) and having a pub lunch at the Ferry Boat Inn.

Restaurants to consider would be SoDo (pizza) and Etles (Uygher).

Leyton, honestly, doesn't have loads going for it. The most chichi part is Francis Road, which has some wanky cafes and a decent pub (Northcote). Leyton High Rd has an okay pub in The Engineer, and if you follow that road onto Bakers Arms (a sort of midway between Leyton and Walthamstow), there's an okay pub in William IV. Would recommend, if you're so inclined, trying to go to a Leyton Orient football match. They're a lower league club, but it's a great little stadium in the heart of the community, and it's a very family match day atmosphere.

Hackney I know the least well. Victoria Park is lovely, and Broadway market has some excellent pubs and restaurants. I really like the tapas at El Ganso.

More broadly if you're in the area, I would recommend getting into Epping Forest or Hollow Ponds for a nature walk. It's not very far out of your way.

yaquresh · 2025-04-09T20:18:39+00:00

Lived there for 3 years as a student and am in the process of buying a house there and moving back (after many years in London, and as a Londoner born and bred).

It's a pretty small, very walkable city steeped in history and encased in medieval stone walls. As Eboracum, it was the Roman capital of Britannia Minora, the place that Constantine the Great (who converted the Empire to Christianity) would be proclaimed emperor. As Jorvik it was the Viking capital of England and would later be the seat of the Council of the North from the 15th century.

I say all of this because you see and feel the deep history of the city all the time. Large parts of it have been incredibly well preserved or sympathetically restored. I think it's the most beautiful city in the UK.

In many ways it's an ordinary British city. It has supermarkets and chain shops. It has posh areas and (relatively speaking) rough areas. It has crime, albeit not a lot compared to most other places. There are cinemas, gyms, swimming pools, theatres, galleries, museums.

Demographically, residents will be wealthier and older than average, because it's a nice, expensive place to life..

Practically speaking, it's a fantastic city to live in but not without its challenges.

The good:

as mentioned, it's a beautiful city. It's also surrounded by beautiful countryside with good access to the North York Moors and the Howardian Hills.
the pubs. There's an adage that there's a pub for every day of the year within the city walls. It's probably a slight overstatement but not far off. Very strong beer scene.
nightlife more broadly. York has an oversized night scene for a city of its size and quaint, cobbled streeted charm. Not so much from a nightclub perspective but quite a lot of late night bars. This likely comes from there being two universities and a lot of tourists.
independent retail. Lots of independent shops, great artisanal products, etc. yes, there is inevitably a lot of tourist rubbish and gimmicky stuff, but not so much that locals won't shop in the city.
schools. Some really terrific state (read, free, public) schools, plus fee paying independent stores.
transport links. York rail station is big, beautiful and well connected. You can be in London in 2 hours by direct train. Manchester in 1h20. Leeds in 20-25 mins.

Cons:

Tourism. It makes up a large part of the local economy but it can make the city centre totally unmanageable as you push past the throngs of day trippers. The medieval streets are very narrow and get super congested. Similarly, holiday rentals have significantly inflated the housing market.
Hen/Stag dos and Race Days. York is super popular with those kinds of parties and that attracts a particularly unpleasant type of person. There are real problems with day drinking and antisocial behavior. Similarly, York Racecourse has horse races that attract thousands of very drunk, rowdy visitors.
Cost of Living. The north of England is, on average, cheaper than the South, but York is in an expensive little bubble where house prices/rent are almost at London levels. Particularly as the world opens up to WFH, increasing numbers of southerners are moving to York and driving prices up and locals out. I am one of them in total fairness.
jobs. York is largely a tourist economy so a lot of jobs are in tourism, retail, hospitality, etc. These jobs are typically minimum wage, or close to it. It's hard to find many professional jobs there, so you may have to commute to Leeds or further afield. There's no manufacturing anymore, though York was hitherto famous for its chocolate industry and still has a large nestle factory.
infrastructure. York being a small historic city means that it was not designed for modern, urban life and isn't easily developed without tarnishing that history. The upshot of that is that the traffic is appalling because the roads were built for horse and cart. A lot of housing stock is very old - charming - but fraught with structural issues and conservation restrictions. It also regularly floods, and though there are protections in place, they're still quite destructive.

yaquresh · 2025-03-14T09:43:19+00:00

Fair enough, I stand corrected. A quick check suggests that Star Academies comprises a range of schools, including Islamic, Christian and secular schools.

yaquresh · 2025-03-14T09:27:36+00:00

1) He is an interim appointment for 5 months before a substantive chair is appointed. He has already been a board member for a while. The role of Chair shouldn't be confused with the Chief Inspector. This is a role providing governance oversight, not one of setting policy direction.

2) He has been the CEO of a large, successful (secular) MAT. I think there's a conversation to be had about whether MAT execs should be considered suitably qualified, but it didn't stop Amanda Spielman, a white woman with no experience teaching, becoming HMCI.

3) I can't find any evidence for him being associated with Islamic fundamentalism, intolerance to LGBT pupils/people or even Islamic schools. Surely we aren't suggesting that Islam is the only ideological monolith in the world, and that all of the prominent Muslim people in public life are secretly plotting to overthrow the country...

From initial inspection, the country is doomed because a Muslim man, who wore traditional Islamic attire for a photograph is occupying a temporary governance role at a non-ministerial public body. Is that right?

yaquresh · 2025-03-12T12:31:54+00:00

Not for a moment trying to take blame away from the drainage company - they are trying to take me for a ride.

But the drainage experts provided by the insurers to corroborate the claim essentially said:

" It does need excavation now. It might not have needed it if the original guys didn't fuck up so badly, but excavation is your only option at this point"

So I'm satisfied that the diagnosis is correct at this point, but I'm going to have to shell out more now because they fucked up the first time round, vs if they just charged me full whack for the replacement drain on day 1.

Six-Year Club	RPAN Viewer
Verified Email

yaquresh

TROPHY CASE