Ah yes - meant to post this the other day, after I watched another "get your antiques valued" programme on TV, and then browsing a historic ships website.

Glasgow is a fine city, with many great achievements to its name. So there is no need for anyone to pinch, on its behalf, the achievements of a neighbouring town. As a "Bankie", something that really gets me annoyed is to hear Clydebank being referred to as part of Glasgow (it is not, and never has been), or to find the great ship-building achievements of the Clydebank shipyards being attributed to Glasgow.

Among the many ships built in Clydebank, many of the great, record-breaking trans-Atlantic passenger liners were built there - the Lusitania, the Aquitania, the Queen Mary, etc.

Clydebank is NOT part of Glasgow, and these ships were built in Clydebank, NOT built in Glasgow!

Just watched the latest episode of "The Antiques Roadshow" on BBC1, which was filmed in Scotland. One man brought along a pair of "wally dugs" - flat backed china or porcelain dogs designed in pairs to sit at either end of mantelpiece, and often made in Staffordshire, though some come from Scotland. The English porcelain expert reviewing them had clearly never heard the Scottish term "wally dugs" before, and (sigh!) jumped to the conclusion that it was a reference to "woollie" because these dogs are often modelled with a thick long coat (they are usually based on the King Charles spaniel). The man who brought the dogs along thought "wally" was a reference to "wall" because they were designed to sit against a wall (hence the flat backs).

Wrong, both of them.

"Wally" (or "wallie"), pronounced "wahli", is a Scots word for china or porcelain.

It originally meant (and is still occasionally used in this way) fine, good-looking, decorative, ornamental. Through usage, it then came to mean china or porcelain, since the adjective was so often applied to fine decorative china objects. "Wally dugs" simply means decorative china dogs (though it's almost exclusively used to refer to these flat-backed mantelpiece dogs). By further extension, the plural form "wallies" (pronounced "wahliz") has come to mean false teeth, as a result of these once being made out of porcelain.

See "The Online Scots Dictionary", an excellent resource.

A minor flurry of excitement this week amongst those researching Scottish family history online. The indexes and scanned images from the 1861 census in Scotland went live on Scotland's People, the official source of online genealogical data for Scotland. We all immediately rushed off to the website to see what new twigs of information we could add to our various family trees.

So far, in my own family research, we've found a few fascinating snippets, such as discovering that one related family, in 1861, had two lodgers living with them - boys of 12 and 14 who were born in Africa. There's a story lurking there I'm sure. I may even have a go at tracking it down one day, simply out of curiosity.

And then, trying to trace a particularly elusive ancestor, I found one of her sons - banged up in prison! There he is, listed on census day 1861 as a prisoner inmate of Castlefield County Prison in Cupar, Fife. Oh, the ignominy of it! :)

Queen's Walk (view larger image in Flickr).

Time to head back to the office, so a slow amble up Queen's Walk towards Green Park tube station.

Ornamental lamp post in Green Park (view larger image in Flickr).

Dotted around the park are these lovely old lamp posts, I assume dating back to the time of gas street lamps. Makes you think of Narnia, doesn't it? :)

Green Park (view larger image in Flickr).

Finished my presentation, and left them to their deliberations. Outside, it's a glorious day, and I take a little time just to relax and enjoy the sunshine.

Lancaster House - ceiling (view larger image in Flickr).

Just one of the many beautiful paintings on the ceilings in Lancaster House in London.

Lancaster House - fireplace (view larger image in Flickr).

Lancaster House in London is the most sumptuous concoction of marble, gilded mouldings and painted ceilings. Had to go there today to give a presentation to a group of EU policy makers, and couldn't resist taking a couple of photographs during the coffee break. Amazing place.

At the end of 2003, my GP referred me to the local Mental Health Trust to see a specialist. I have suffered from frequent bouts of severe anxiety and depression for many years, and although anti-depressant medication helps, I felt it was becoming less and less effective, and had reached a point where I wanted to try to understand the underlying causes of my anxiety and depression and if possible find better ways of dealing with it. I saw the specialist in January 2004, and she agreed to refer me for Cognitive and Behavioural Therapy (CBT). She said there was a waiting list - about 6 months. Having lived with this problem for many years now, I felt that I could manage to wait another 6 months to try a form of therapy that I hope will help. I had a further meeting with the specialist a couple of months later, just to review how I was getting on.

Two to three months later, I received a letter from the clinic informing me that that specialist had left and another one had taken up the post.

After that, the silence was deafening.

I waited patiently, imagining that the waiting list was taking longer than expected to move. But as the months went by, I started to wonder what was happening. I phoned the clinic a couple of times, to ask what was happening. Each time, I was told that I would have to talk to the specialist, but that they were not available. I asked for someone to call me back, and was assured that someone would. No-one ever did, and no other information was ever offered.

A few months ago, I spoke to my GP about this. They were surprised to hear that I was not, by now, receiving the therapy agreed on, and that I hadn't heard anything further from the clinic. They had not received any communication from the Mental Health Trust about me, and so as far as the GP was aware, I was still on the Mental Health Trust's "books". They suggested phoning the trust again. I did, with as little success as before. When I next spoke to my GP, they agreed to refer me again for counselling. A while later, I received a questionnaire similar to one I had filled in the first time I was referred. I filled it in, and added a note explaining the previous referral, and posted it back.

Once again, the silence was deafening.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I was having a really bad day, so I took some time off work and went down to the Mental Health Trust in person. I told the woman in the Reception office that I wanted to speak to someone about my GP's referral. She asked me to wait as she had to finish a couple of letters first! I stood there for about 5-10 minutes while she spoke to lots of other people, typed a few things, dealt with a couple of phone calls, etc. I began to feel completely invisible. Finally someone else suggested that she attend to "that woman". She turned back to me and asked for my name and date of birth. She then looked up my details on the computer system, and said that I had been discharged a year ago after failing to attend four consecutive appointments (well what she actually said was more like "The computer shows DNA, DNA, DNA, DNA, discharged" and I had to ask pointedly what "DNA" meant!).

I'm afraid what little composure I had left deserted me at that point, and I started to cry (as much from frustration as anything else!) and pointed out that I had never received any notification of any appointments, nor had I received any notification of being discharged from their books.

This reaction did at least get their attention, and I was taken into a room where I was then joined by one of the managers. But she wasn't able to tell me much, because apparently my file (being regarded as not currently active) was in a room that was currently being used for a consultation, so she couldn't get hold of it to review what it contained. But at least she said she would check what my current status was on the CBT waiting list.

I have now been informed that I am on the waiting list, but not from any referral in January last year - that appears to have vanished into thin air - and that it will be January 2006 at the earliest before I will be able to see the CBT specialist. My GP has no record of any letter from the Mental Health Trust discharging me. It appears that someone somewhere has made a mistake, and either sent the appointment notifications to the wrong address, or even not sent them at all. But no-one appears to be willing to take any of that into account. I still have to wait a further 3-4 months. I'm being offered "interim" counselling with a Graduate Counsellor in the meantime. How useful or productive that will be, I wait to see.

I am really angry at how I have been treated by the Mental Health Trust. I am also appalled at the complete lack of common courtesy shown in the way they spoke to me when I went there a couple of weeks ago - I was ignored, had jargon thrown at me (the manager also kept using acronyms like "CBT" until I asked her to please explain what she was talking about). I have received no apology for the additional delay I am experiencing in accessing the help I need, no explanation as to what happened to the CBT referral made at the beginning of 2004, and no suggestion that I might be moved up the waiting list having already waited more than 3 times as long as I should have.

I have sent a letter of complaint to the Mental Health Trust and wait to see what their response is.

Until almost 2 years ago, it was difficult to get a doctor's appointment at the surgery we attend in less than 2-3 days. However if I wanted to book an appointment a week in advance, there was no problem at all. Then the government introduced a target of of no patient having to wait longer than 48 hours for an appointment.

This should have been a Good Thing.

But many practices, including ours, chose to implement this by refusing to give appointments more than 48 hours in advance. Our surgery didn't even write to inform us of this change in policy - I discovered it when I phoned to make an appointment for the following week for something that was not medically urgent, and was told that I would have to phone the day before I wanted the appointment. They also insist that they will only deal with arranging appointments between 9am and 10:30am. The result of that is of course that from 1 second past 9 o'clock in the morning, the surgery phone is engaged, and it can take ages to get through. Not exactly convenient if you have a busy schedule, and want to organise non-urgent medical appointments around other commitments.

Since then, Chris and I have struggled to arrange doctor's appointments. Just a couple of months ago, I phoned on Tuesday morning to ask for an appointment on Friday, as I had client meetings on the Wednesday and Thursday mornings - the surgery staff refused, insisting that they couldn't book appointments more than 48 hours ahead. I did not have time to phone the surgery on the Wednesday or Thursday, so it was Friday before I was able to phone again, with the result that it was the following Tuesday before I was able to visit the doctor. And that makes me angry, because their official records will show that as being within the 48 hour target, since the surgery isn't open on Saturday or Sunday, despite the fact that, for me, it was actually a week from when I first phoned them to when I saw the doctor.

So I started looking around online to see what I could find out.

You may remember Prime Minister Tony Blair's surprise and concern, in the run-up to the general election, at hearing that this was how this particular target was being implemented. It certainly wasn't what they had envisaged. I had hoped, at that point, that we might see a change in policy filter down to the surgery level, but clearly that hadn't happened in our surgery, whatever was going on elsewhere.

Just a week or so after that frustrating episode trying to arrange an appointment to see the doctor, a set of figures were published, indicating that around 33% of patients were still being subjected to these restrictions on how far in advance they could book an appointment. I then found a Press Release on the Department of Health website indicating that additional measures were being put in place to "encourage" GP surgeries to implement more flexible booking systems. I started to feel hopeful.

In the same Press Release, a reference was made to a question about appointment booking practices, which had been included since late in 2004 in the monthly survey carried out around all Primary Care Trusts. I hunted around some more, but could find no further information about this.

What I did notice, however, were references to the Freedom of Information act, and information about how to request information from the Department of Health under this legislation. So I sent them an email asking for the exact wording of the question and the responses to this question that had been submitted by the Primary Care Trust which covers this area, since the question was introduced into the monthly survey.

About 10 days later, I received a reply, containing the information I had requested. And guess what? Our local Primary Care Trust has been reporting for the last FOUR MONTHS that NONE of the GP surgeries in this area operates a booking system that prevents patients from booking an appointment more than 48 hours ahead. Oh yes?

I had an opportunity to speak the the Practice Manager a week ago, and in the course of our conversation, I asked when they would be introducing more a more flexible booking system, in the light of the recent communication from the Department of Health, and she said that all you have to do when booking an appointment is inform the receptionist that you work, and need to fit the appointment in around other commitments, and they will book an appointment up to a week in advance. I pointed out that I had tried that on several occasions, the most recent just a few weeks ago, and that the receptionists had nonetheless always refused to book an appointment more than 48 hours ahead. She agreed to speak to the staff and remind them that they should be more flexible when requested.

I'll see what happens next time I need to make an appointment to see the doctor - should be in a month or so. But if they still refuse to book an appointment more than 48 hours in advance what do I do? I don't want to get on a GP blacklist for complaining, and how do you complain about something that the Practice Manager and the official figures say isn't happening in the first place?!

Technorati subject tags: NHS, Health Services, Doctors, Healthcare

Laryngitis does weird things to your voice. One minute it's a harsh croak, the next it's non-existent, then suddenly it's husky and quite sexy! Very disconcerting not to know what's going to emerge when you open your mouth to speak.

"There are a small but growing number of products appearing on the market which claim to be able to produce an accessible website from an inaccessible one. These products are, in general:

• Based on the twin premises that creating a text-only version of a site addresses the accessibility requirements of users and the law, and that a text-only version is automatically accessible.
  
• Marketed on the basis that you don't have to do anything else in order to create an accessible website - simply put your (inaccessible) website in at one end, and get an accessible, text-only version of the site out at the other end.

Oh if only it was all true!"

Read the full article in RNIB's Web Access Centre.

Technorati subject tags: Accessibility, Web Accessibility, Web Standards

"Checkpoint 10.4 (priority 3) in the WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 states:

"Until user agents handle empty controls correctly, include default, place-holding characters in edit boxes and text areas."

This is one of those checkpoints which was always intended as an interim solution to a problem that existed at the time the WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 were written. As far as I know, empty form controls no longer cause problems for user agents (such as browsers or screen readers), so there is no longer any particular requirement to provide place-holding characters.

In fact, they can actually cause problems for some users because of how some browsers and screen readers interact when handling place-holder text."

Read the full article in RNIB's Web Access Centre.

Technorati subject tags: Accessibility, Web Accessibility, Web Standards

This article is based on a presentation I made at a Public Sector Forums event on "GIS for Local Government" on 15 September.

"At present, it is impossible to make graphic presentations of some types of GIS data directly accessible to those using text, speech or braille formats to access their PC and the Web. Some types of data simply can't be made directly accessible with the technologies currently available. Various research projects are investigating alternative methods of accessing information, for example the use of variable sound to convey information, or the use of "virtual reality" technologies to enable information to be explored using a range of senses including touch. But practical implementations of these methods and technologies are some way off.

There are, however, interim accessibility solutions that can be implemented for many types of GIS data. These solutions require that the data is presented in an alternative, text-based format as well as graphically. The most suitable format for accessing and displaying the information will obviously depend on the nature of the information being presented."

Read the full article in RNIB's Web Access Centre.

Technorati subject tags: Accessibility, Web Accessibility, Web Standards