vivweb01blog

T his blog was originally published in October 2022 when the steep rises in food prices resulting from Covid, the Ukraine war were beginning to bite in earnest. We have now emerged from what was a period of significant deprivation for some, and things are likely to get even tougher now that the various one-off  financial subsidies have long gone, and much higher accommodation and other living costs are really kicking in. Labour's 'Austerity 2.0' measures and benefit restrictions have exacerbated the problems for many of the least well off , and the latest 'challenge' to our finances just emerging is  the fallout from the Israel-Iran conflict. Oil prices have already spiked by around 10%, and the markets have become more volatile. More to come, undoubtedly before some sort of resolution is achieved. The ideas and proposals outlined back in 2022 would seem equally relevant today, given that the steepest price rises of all when each successive crisis hits seem to occur...

  This week’s news columns are full of reports that our NHS is critically short of blood.  The plaintive   exhortations in many of them for at least 200,000 new donors would certainly seem to suggest there is a crisis….but what has caused it and what can we as a nation do about it ? In truth, this is not a new problem. As in most things, the NHS has been ‘making do and mending’ on blood products of all kinds for at least the last 3-4 years, and arguably a lot longer. The current estimate of donors on the register is ca 800,000 and this equates to only around 2.6% of the eligible population donating in any one year. Why do we need regular donations ? One of the key problems with blood products is their limited lifetime. Red blood cells, the main product used for transfusions, have a lifetime of ca 35 days; Other blood products vary widely – blood plasma can be stored frozen for up to 3 years, while platelets have a much shorter lifetime of ca 7 days, and granulocytes...

Update: An Epitaph to Wagner ?.... So Prighozin is no more – as we forecast in the original post (see text below this update.) In some ways it’s surprising it took so long, given Putin’s initial reaction to the attempted coup in late June and his previous 'form'. One way or another,  the ‘Putin brand’ had to make it crystal clear that any opposition to its rule would attract the maximum penalty - or risk suffering a fatal loss of credibility. There’s little doubt about the ultimate instigator of the ‘accident’ that destroyed Prighozin’s private jet – the only questions are ‘who actually carried out the hit ?’ and ‘how ?’ The answer to the ‘how’ question now appears to favour an on-board bomb rather than an overt shoot-down. A surface to air missile would in any case have been too easy for outside agencies to detect and ascribe blame for, and thus much less ‘deniable’ than a bomb.  The ‘who’ question is a little more interesting – although Putin must have sanctioned the j...

Editor's note: Three years further down the line since the orirginal publication, we've now effectively reverted to pre-pandemic behaviour - with the expected increases in respiratory and other infections. The precautions outlined below are still very relevant, although it may be difficult to adopt some of them, particularly for those living in family groups. For anyone with compromised immune systems, however, they are a must, and for the rest of us, should prove a useful protective shield, particularly during the winter months. ----------------------------- S ince we are now well past the 2nd anniversary of the first UK Covid lockdown (March 23rd 2020), I thought it might be useful to review what we've learnt from the pandemic over the last two years, and make some suggestions as to how to apply some of this to help us all prevent respiratory infections in future.   M ost of us generally suffer from 2-3 bouts of common cold symptoms each year. If we assume that each bout ...