Ramblers anonymous
Jan 21st, 2008 by Bert
A poor post yesterday, I think largely failing to appreciate quite how desperate the ground was at Ascot. The main thing that’s absent from my analysis at the moment is quality research, largely because I don’t have the time to do it. Anyway onward and upward - a day off racing as Wolver didn’t inspire me today and I suspect I won’t be looking at the papers until my next runner comes out. I’ve got a bit of time on my hands, so it’s a long rambling blog today.
My house move is getting nearer. The builders have been in for a couple of months now and the place is looking fairly spruce - we’ll move in in mid Feb. There will still be an enormous amount of work to be done - it’s a 330 acre farm that I’m planning to turn into a stud, and it’s a long way off what it needs to be at the moment. We need to build a substantial stable block and houses for the stud groom and other workers. We need to improve the pasture we have and break it up into paddocks. We have a lot of work to do on the house and surrounding barns, and a lot of trees to plant. We can’t do anything until we have planning, and since the farm is locally listed and on the green belt it may prove tough. It’s a challenge though which is really what I want right now - it would be nice to think I could take it easy and enjoy the simple pleasures of life for a while, but I know myself well enough to know that I just get miserable when I haven’t got much on. I need a lot to do and in particular a lot to think about.
I was reading about Leslie Ash in the papers yesterday - £5 million from the National Health for contracting MRSA at the Chelsea and Westminster. It brings back memories - my father died of MRSA in 1999 which he picked up at Kingston Hospital. He was 65, fit and healthy - he went down with Pancreatitis (a very nasty condition) and was soon in intensive care. About a week later they told us he had got MRSA. A week after that, with my father sedated round the clock, I took matters into my own hands - I made some calls and arranged for him to be transferred to St. Thomas’s in central London. I told the head nurse at the Kingston ITU - she gave me a filthy look, turned round, walked into her office and slammed the door.
A day later, after a frantic charge across London in an ambulance, he was in the ITU at St. Thomas’s. It was just after the Soho bomb blast and there were some horribly maimed people in the ward. We kept a vigil - after a lot of discussion the doctors decided the way to go was to operate. He survived the operation but a few days later the MRSA got into his lungs and the writing was on the wall. I’ll never forget sitting next to him just watching his vital signs and heart monitor winding down and eventually grinding to a halt.
I was devastated - he was my hero for so many reasons. I spent the next three days just sitting in a chair staring out of the window and getting my thoughts together. I wrote a speech for his funeral. He was popular - it was a big church but it was packed with a lot standing at the back, but when I went up to give my speech there was total and almost eerie silence. I opened my mouth to speak and the back of my throat was suddenly bone dry and I was choking. I got through the speech and the reception later, and went back to my chair.
My father was a quiet man, always cheerful and positive and very clever - he’d come top in the country when he metriculated in maths and I used to marvel at the speed at which he’d knock off complex maths problems. He was very shy, but he’d been bold in his business life and had pulled off a couple of really remarkable ventures - I think I admired him more for this than anything else. A few weeks before he’d been taken ill I’d shown him the betting exchange prototype that I’d been building in my spare time. His advice had been simple - give up work and give it a go. I hadn’t been sure at the time and I was chewing on it - it was easily the best piece of work I’d ever done and I felt I’d had some genuine inspiration along the way, but life was comfortable as it was and I’d be jacking in the best paid job I’d ever had. After he died there was nothing more to think about - I handed it my notice straight away and got cracking.
When I had picked up his death certificate I noted it listed cause of death as “multi organ failure following pancreatitis” or some such similar wording. It should have just said “MRSA” - the cynic in me wondered if the MRSA was being covered up to protect the stats. It occurred to me that there was a case for the family to seek compensation from the NHS, but I had no great will to go there.
Leslie Ash has taken more off the NHS than the combined total of all their MRSA payouts over the previous 4 years. I’m not sure how I feel - I have massive sympathy for anyone with MRSA, but a £5m payout is out of kilter with normal NHS policy and this is a dangerous precedent.
The other story I read today was about hedge fund managers and the vast amounts of money they made last year. Several made in excess of £1 billion - for them £5m is just a day and a half’s work. That’s scary stuff - with numbers like those I think something has to give at some point, I’m just not sure what, where and how.
I have a small fry history in hedge funds, and I hadn’t been sure for a while whether I wanted to build a betting exchange or start a hedge fund. I decided that the way to go would be to do the betting exchange thing first and the hedge fund thing later - unfortunately the world has moved on and my hedge fund ideas are rather old hat now. I used to punt stocks and shares a lot, but I hardly ever do so now as I find it such a distraction.
All of this said I now have my position in Silverjet, and I’m still researching it. I’ve had a couple of interesting emails in response to the blog, one positive one negative. Hopefully I’ll find time to do a bit more research this week.
8 Responses to “Ramblers anonymous”
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To quote from Wilkepedia:-
Ash was originally hospitalised at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in April 2004 after suffering two cracked ribs, claiming she fell off her bed on to a table during a love-making session with her husband.
I am very sorry for her condition, but in this case I am not sure all the blame lies with the NHS.
As an ex-neighbour I would have to say “no comment”.
Not sure about Silverjet. I like the product and think there must be a number of routes that it can work (London - Vegas, London - Macau, London - CHINA) but I’m not sure about London - Dubai. Sometimes I think you just have to look at the long term feasibility and competition and surely they can’t compete with the likes of Emirates etc. I think that their start up costs for this route may eventually be lost and a pull-out may effect the perceived ability of the business…. Time will tell.
Sorry to hear about your father.
MRSA is unfortunately something that ‘we’ have generated by our own stupidity. Sometime ago hospitals had their own laundry’s where uniforms were washed and prepared, not any more. Staff would have lockers and nurses would have ward shoes rather than ’street’ shoes. Doctors would wash their hands between patients (and not work 60 hour weeks). People wouldn’t sit on beds. If GB PLC wants to have a NHS/health service that can tackle a mounting list of antibiotic resistant illnesses we must look at the fundamentals and try not to save money in these areas. This isn’t politics and it shouldn’t be a finance issue either.
With regard to the horses, hype seems to be a big thing this NH season. Twist Magic is a good horse but not a ‘world beater’, Kauto Star and Denman are very good but are they better than Best Mate? Interestingly they are all with one trainer. I’m not his biggest fan but he doesn’t appear to be over hyping them, the press do. I surprised as they never really gave the same positive coverage to M C Pipe. Is David Pipe getting his fair share of coverage? Any thoughts?
What are you views on the updated Racing Post website? A bit dodgy in my opinion.
Good luck with Max123 and WW a 1000, 2000 double is what any stud needs!
Agree with you “lastfiver” about problems with health service. My mother passed away last Monday night. Death certificate reads “Pulmonary Embolism”, “Deep Vein Thrombosis”, and C. Difficile. The standard of hygeine in the Elderly Patients Rehabilation Unit was not good enough.
On one occasion my sister took some clean nighties to my mother. She went to put them in the cupbard in mums room/ward and she found soiiled nighties with clean nighties.
I would like to see an independant enquiry into the Health Service to get to the bottom of these problems, and come up with some radical solutions.
Perhaps we could persuade “Bert” or some other like minded individuals to sponsor it.
lastfiver, i know Andrew has a few children, but to refer to him as a ’stud’ seems a little OTT imo.
Hello dear boy
I was wondering if you would be awfully kind enough to exchange blog links. My blog address is:
http://thebrigadiersblog.blogspot.com/
Kind Regards
Godfrey Hoopington-Charles
Leslie Ash’s whole life has become a mess, what with her absurd lip job, the state of her marriage and then the MRSA thing. Ofcourse no-one would wish her any ill-will but the £5million payout must feel offensive to other sufferers of this terrible virus. It seems we, the taxpayers, are compensating her for all the things that have gone wrong for her, self inflicted or otherwise.
Have just read your blog and agree with many of your thoughts and I had a very similar experience. My father went in to hospital to have some kidney stones removed and picked up a bug through invasive surgery. He did not want to go into hospital and said the previous treatment he had received cured the pain and he felt fine. I persuaded him it was a good idea as he would then have no pssibility of any more problems. He died a couple of weeks after the procedure on 21 December 1999 and was left with a terrible feeling of guilt, did not take any action as my father was a quiet man who would not have wanted any fuss.
He liked a bet and I take after him.
Think Nick Henderson will have a good weekend, also noticed Nick Gifford has a horse called Nomecheki owned by Stewart family in Arkle at Cheltenham which has not run. Have you any information on this horse?
Thanks all for the comments. It’s disturbing that even in the limited readership of my blog there are two similar stories - I’ve believed for a long time that the nature of the recording of this information is leading to a serious understating of the scale of MRSA/MSSA problems around the country.
Lastfiver - I think David Pipe probably does deserve a little more coverage. He’s done well with a number of horse this year, the most impressive perhaps being Lough Derg who is suddenly in the best form of his life as an 8yo. I think his father is still very much on the scene, which may be taking a little away from his own performance. I guess it’s all about Cheltenham. I preferred the RP site before but it’s still a quality site (best of its type in the world IMO) and it gives me what I want which is the main thing.
Godfrey - I’ll put the link up.
James - I know nothing about Nomechecki. Nick also has Russian Around and Wee Robbie in the Arkle (I don’t understand why Wee Robbie qualifies) and either could go well in what might not be a vintage year. I’ll ask him when I next speak to him.