Only a couple of days ago, Neil did a design for us here at Munguin’s New Republic, and then our very talented Andi did a cartoon version of Munguin at Munguin Towers saying how much he loves our NHS.
So without further ado… here it is.
Once again Munguin and I are much touched (that’s enough, Niko) and we’d like to thank Andi for his gift even if Munguin did have to paint in the “+Munguin” himself.
Love, theatre and ideas
British Wildlife & Photography
Why Scotland should be an independent country
Thoughts about Scotland & the world, from a new Scot
Bipartisan dialogue for the politically engaged
Impartial Informative Always
We Provide The Facts, You Make The Decisions
Exploring Rhymes, Reasons, and Nuances of Our World
Mark Doran's Music Blog
Guitarist / Songwriter / Blogger
This site supports Scottish Independence
A comic about history and stuff by FT
The embittered mumblings of a serial malcontent.
an irreverent look at UK politics
Your Source For The Coolest Science Stories
The greatest WordPress.com site in all the land!
Original Nature Photojournalism
http://netbij.com
Movies, politics, comedy and more...
“Compassionate toward oneself, we reconcile all inner, and the universe - from within.”
Love it. Some very talented people here at Munguin’s
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yes, Tatu. I’m blown away by the talent, but that’s Scotland for you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
its absolutely lovely though I have to say Munguin is much bigger than I thought or is that castle just very far away (Father Ted)?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ah, Munguin Towers is a magical place, like Hogwarts. It expands when it needs to. Somehow, when I’m on cleaning duties, it seems much larger than it is!
LikeLike
He’s obviously an Emperor penguin.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, obviously. 🙂
Not sure how that fits with his “Republic”… but who am I to doubt Munguin?
LikeLike
Just confirms what I have always thought. An awful lot of brilliant, talented people on M.N.R. Quite jealous.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am too, Alex.
LikeLike
Very apt! Portraits of Mr. Munguin and views of Munguin Towers are always very cheering.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Munguin says it’s to be hung (or do I mean hanged) in the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. Great Scots!
LikeLike
Pictures are hung, horses are well-hung, murders are hanged (or used to be).
LikeLike
I remember reading that, one time Enoch Powell was being interviewed on the radio (wireless, I suppose back then) and the interviewer asked if he thought that whomever they were talking about should be “hung”.
In that rather high Birmingham twang he replied …”hanged, hanged, the word is hanged”.
Oooops.
LikeLike
sorry to go o/t so quickly as Andimac deserves much praise but this is important.
Remember Chuck who travelled to Aberdeenshire despite warnings not to go to your holiday home. Well I’m hearing that he is going to formally open the Nightingale hospital in LONDON. He’s better bloody stay there this time (London that is not the hospital)!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s amazing how the great and the good manage to recover from these things far more quickly than anyone else.
Matt Hancock was back at the podium after only 7 days, when all the advice is to wait 14 days.
Charlie came to Scotland and returned to England, while still presumably contaminated.
Or maybe none of them actually had it?
LikeLike
Except,of course,for our UK leader in hiding who is still struck down with something.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Laziness and incompetence… and no-one-told- me-it-was-going-to-be-like-thisitus?
LikeLiked by 1 person
well I’m now hearing he’s doing it via video link which if true is not so bad. But then what is the point – why can’t just be bloody opened by the head cleaner who is more useful and relevant.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Agree with the sentiment.
Why bother with the official opening by Video.
Just get on with the important things, I’m pretty sure that the plebs have been using the doors to get in and out plus the facilities.
Wonder if it has a MATRON on the books rather than a video patron.
I think we are about to see the media try to cover up the UK exceeding the Spanish numbers with more spin.
They don’t get it, their plan is to return to the old economy as soon as the numbers fall.
Anyone want a free movement letter from Hand Cock to go with their nice new passport?
LikeLiked by 1 person
If it’s a blue passport with the great British stuff (in French) all over it, the answer is YES.
On the other hand, it was made abroad so I don’t expect we’ll get any of them delivered.
LikeLike
Just saw a wee clip of the new nightingale hospital opening.
Hand Cock being interviewed.
In the background the media are all keeping away from each other, like a foot apart.
I take it they have been given a freedom of movement letter from hand cock.
The visual message is, do what I do.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t know why anyone is celebrating. This is not a hospital where people are going for a cure. There isn’t a cure. I was reading that there’s an expectation that 80% of admissions won’t be going home .
LikeLiked by 1 person
You’re so correct Jake.
My reading of the graphs on ‘presentvalueltd.com’ is that the number of recoveries declared in the ENHS is around 5% of admissions, other countries graphs are showing the 20% recoveries.
The sycophantics on the media are praising the, opening and in use, state of the lonely death facility is far from the truth, there are NO patients in the facility, possibly next week. The great news that hand cock is back in charge is pushed, what.
They go on to tell of all the nighting Ale lonely death facilities around the country, Harrogate, Bristol, Manchester etc.
Note some oversight there?
Meanwhile elsewhere in the world the news from’ where you are’ say that there are no patients as yet.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I read that the UK had overtaken Spain now.
LikeLike
Was the prince of inconsiderate bastards there?
LikeLike
Isn’t Charlie boy still at Birkhall?
LikeLike
apparently. He did indeed open it via video link or rather a nurse pulled the curtain on a plaque with his name on it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, PP. I didn’t know that.
Nor did I actually care about it.
LikeLike
He went back to London. Presumably no longer reckons he can get any of the lurgy there… and let’s be honest, he wasn’t exactly welcome here.
LikeLike
It’s my week for a surprise
The hardened extremist snp
Disciples praise a Labour Party
Yes Ă Labour Party creation
A National Health Service.
Well I never
LikeLiked by 1 person
The national health service was created over 70 years ago, around 1947/8.
Maybe it was created to help deal with the injuries created by the fighting in the WW2 and the continuation of treating the survivors of the WW1.
The main thing forgotten about the Nighting Ale was that they were treating the survivors of the Crimean War.
Almost like celebrating the chopping off a finger after carelessly putting it in the way of the chopper.
Treating the sick should be a given in a caring society, you don’t know when you might need to use the facilities, just as chick III in waiting has just discovered after leaving the nest of London.
We will look on these facilities being rushed up as the ‘Lonely Dying’ facilities.
LikeLiked by 1 person
One of the best things that ever happened to Scotland was the National Health Service. All praise to the only true Labour government we ever had.
LikeLike
Sky News
The founder of JD.com, China’s biggest retailer, is donating millions of items of medical equipment to the NHS as some prominent Chinese companies see the coronavirus pandemic as a way to burnish their reputations in key export markets.
Sky News has learnt that Richard Liu and his wife Nancy have been in discussions with the government and NHS executives about a shipment comprising 50 ventilators, five million medical masks and 600,000 pairs of surgical gloves, medical safety goggles and protective gowns.
The equipment is scheduled to arrive in the UK next week.
Wonder if the english nationalists will refuse to be treated with this equipment?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Gove: We can manage fine as an Independent nation, without the help of the EU… Ern, China, could you bail us out? We’re broke and lost and fast becoming a laughing stock.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Off topic – a lot, and a bit annoyed that I can’t find the Pat Kane article I meant to reference.
Anyways, there is an idea called design global, manufacture local.
This explains the idea better than I ever could:
https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2018/1/16/design-global-manufacture-local
As it relates to COVID – 19, our hero in Lochaber, has started to do this.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-teacher-3d-prints-visors-at-school-pgsdm8b0k
In Italy a problematic part in ventilators has been freed from patent and is now available to print by anyone. By the company that owned the patent!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51911070
It is bad out there, but.
I would welcome your opinions, trispw and friends.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Reminds me of the story about the small computer called the ‘Raspberry Pi’.
It was designed and built in Cardiff , Wales.
Produced there until it was decided to manufacture in China.
The device was taken up by the schools to teach youngsters how to write code, many, many needed quickly.
It was discovered that it would be Eight Weeks for them to arrive as they would be on a ship for at least SIX weeks after delivery to the port in China.
Somebody did the arithmetic and found that the cost savings of having them manufactured in China disappeared.
Result they were manufactured again in Cardiff.
As is pointed out, local manufacture.
Don’t have any information on the current situation.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Interesting.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Brilliant.
I think that hard times brings out the best and the worst in people depending on their nature.
It was ever thus.
In the great days of the Blitz, there was huge bravery and many people did absolutely amazing things (we all laugh at Dads’ Army and wardens, but goodness, these people were often brave), but also the crime rate was astronomical as people looted and profiteered.
And so today there are people who can double or treble the price of anything that is much needed and in short supply. There are people who will sack their workers without notice. There are folk who simply will not be told about self isolation, no sod that I’m getting with my friends. There are drivers taking advantage of the empty roads to drive down city streets way too fast… and there are good companies, like the people you mention, like little corner shops getting hand sanitizer to old people, like folk checking that their elderly neighbours have food.
I noticed that a lot of the local shops and pubs have boarded up their glass to stop people breaking ion, given how quiet the streets are.
As I say disaster brings out the best and the worst in people.
LikeLike
I see a headline from “Tony” Hancock saying that he is going to build a Nightingale Hospital in Glasgow. Is this the thin end of the wedge?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, meantime we need lots of ‘kit’ rather than hospitals. If a lunatic cares more about a name – Nightingale is a magical name – rather than saving us all from this virus, well, no matter how iconic the name may be, it is really not the point.
IMHO.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nightingale was helping to treat soldiers who survived attacks in the Crimean war.
They were being used by the empire in a foreign land to further the cause of the empire.
A strange type of sainthood that.
All so unnecessary.
Of course I may only be alive due to a forebear being saved in the military hospitals over the years, I have no way of knowing.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Florence Nightingale actually understood the “numbers”. The problem she faced was convincing the great and the good.
She came up with the idea of the pie chart. It’s simplicity and clarity were crucial in getting closed minds to face the realities.
LikeLiked by 2 people
“Diagram of the causes of Mortality in the Army of the East”:
LikeLiked by 1 person
No, absolutely, as you say, it’s not really the point, Douglas, but it’s not as if there is a shortage of great Scottish nurses.
LikeLike
Yes maybe, Alex.
I’m not sure how he can do that, And he’s so dim witted that maybe it hasn’t occurred to him that Glasgow isn’t within his remit.
If he does, I’d suggest it be called after a famous Scottish nurse. There are plenty of them.
LikeLike
What I think I am trying to say is that, at a time of crisis, absurd restrictions on manufacture ought to be relaxed. I am not arguing that there should not be ‘standards’. I am arguing that there should be no ‘ enforceabe’ patents’.
I would welcome other opinions.
LikeLiked by 1 person
While I agree with you about patents, here’s the thing; if I had a patent on, say, a ventilator I’d be dammed mad if the likes of Dyson and JCB with their access to the ear of Government enriched themselves even more on the back of what was my intellectual property. Companies like these have bought and paid for the power brokers within the Tory party, surely if they have that kind of money to spend on buying influence they can afford to pay a license fee to the patent owner. I’m sure a fair and equitable “manufactured under licence” arrangement can be quickly negotiated. The likes of Dyson and JCB have shown themselves to be the first to patent and to vigorously defend their own patent interests.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Speaking of Florence…….(July 30, 1890):
“When I am no longer a memory – just a name, I hope my voice may perpetuate the great work of my life. God bless my dear old comrades of Balaclava and bring them safe to shore.”
LikeLike
She looks a bit like Victoria.
LikeLiked by 1 person