Hulland Ward etc.

Death was stalking you, but he got fed up and went past on the inside
at that decreasing radius right-hander a few miles back.

 

They used to have them all the way along the A413 and B4011 sections of
the FOT route, but they seem to have been taken down in the last couple
of months.

Or, at least, I didn't notice any last weekend.

 

They are all around here, and most places I seem to go, stating stuff
like " 77 casualties in 5 years", given that the ones I see the most,
on the B656 Hitchin -
Codicote road, have had the same numbers on for several years it makes
me think that it is very selective information, it doesn't specify if
the years are consecutive, which we are presumably suposed to assume,
or an addition of the worst years to make the figures seem more
shocking.

 

I'm safe then. I sold mine to my ex-wife for a silver sixpence. She's
welcome to it - fucking thing never did me any good before I married
her, and even less afterwards.

 

Yes, but the official definition of 'seriously injured' doesn't really
match mine.

This article is instructive:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killed_or_Seriously_Injured

 

I thought that "Seriously injured" meant an overnight stay in
hospital, either way if you do add Killed and Seriously Injured
together, as the article says, you will get a massive and unreliable
figure

 

Well, learnt a new word - stochastic - in the context of trains. Great
stuff.

Still, it would seem the Man's definition of "seriously injured" is my
"poorly". I'm hard.

I'm touching myself. yeah.

 

Is that what's meant by 'keeping your hand on the dead mans handle'?

 

I once used it to model a Consultant's waiting list.

 

<g> Believe it or not it actually helped him shorten it. This was in
the days when waiting lists really were long, and unfortunately taken
by some Consultants (not this one) to be a mark of how much in demand,
i.e. good, they were.

 

I do partly think that having waiting lists are in the consultants own
interest, if they didn't have them there would be an oversupply of
people for the amount of work, and it'd drive salary down.

 

I learnt it from Red Dwarf.

 

it's in our interest too, to a certain extent. A waiting list of a few
weeks or even months for elective procedures is the only sensible way to
run a free at the point of delivery service.

 

Why would it make a difference? Presumably if they caught the backlog
up then things would then be able to carry on at the same pace as they
do now,but would have just a week or so's wait.

 

I first encountered it in Robert Silverberg's novel "The Stochastic Man".

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/stochastic.htm

Kept mixing it up with "stoichiometric"...

 

It's not just the consultant though. Each consultant must drive dozens of
other medical & support staff. There is a risk that if you clear the
backlog then your expensive team of people and facilities will be under-
used. It doesn't make sense to have a proctologist and his team of junior
doctors, nurses, porters etc sit around all day on the off chance that
someone will want their chalfonts sorted out.

Better to give the patient a tube of prep H and tell them to **** off for 5
weeks so you can plan ahead and get the staff in the right place at the
right time.

After all, with elective procedures, many people will tolerate discomfort
whilst they go on holiday, finish that essential work project or get pissed
over New Year.

 

I learnt it from ukrm... today

 

It also encourages those that can pay for private treatment to do so
and allows the spongers to get their free treatment earlier.