Wednesday, 8th July 2009

Howzit

B and I saw the surgeon yesterday afternoon - after they had removed the cast and after an x-ray.

Initially I was a little concerned as it just didn't look right, but I told that the bone graft was just taking a little while to 'firm up'...

I took a snap of the x-ray.

Apologies for the reflection - but I don't think that the x-ray viewers are designed to have photographs taken.

The surgeon took the decision that the graft needs more time to unify and then he would be taking the holding screw out.

I have been put into a lightweight thermoplastic brace (with no less than 7 velcro straps) which I can take off to have a shower! Yay! (B has been putting my arm in a tied black bin bag for more than six months!)

And I have been told to slowly exercise the elbow - remember that it hasn't worked since before Christmas - and to just take it easy. The scar is quite serious (about 22cm long) - B and I also need to work on the dryness of the skin.

So another 6 weeks and then hopefully the bolt will be removed and then into a new leather orthotic brace...

And - a bonus - my fingers are no longer swollen and for the first time in about six years, I am able to wear my wedding ring... Yes!

Post op photo taken in 19 May 2009...

The arm this morning...

It feels great to be out of the cast!

-o00o-

When B and I were leaving the hospital early in the evening, the air ambulance came roaring in - and let's face it, when one of these birds flies, it is serious - and I took a couple of snaps using my mobile phone.

The ambulance is just above the treeline...

The ambulance lands on top of the hospital..

The reason that I include these snaps, poor though they may be, is so that I can say that I have had long and arduous experience within the NHS, and I am sickened that the NHS takes such a public beating in the political halls - but the people that I have worked with, the people under whose care I have been for many years, the service that is rendered to the sick, the frail, the infirm and accident victims, is of the highest value, good calibre and the nurses, the doctors, the specialist are just truly amazing people.

The NHS - don't knock it until you have tried it...

-o00o-

Foreign currency mid-rates updated...

-o00o-

Until we know a lot more about this attack, it would be silly for me to comment - although my opinion of the attacks on farmers is well documented on this page...

"Bob Vaughan-Evans, a director of Zimbabwe's Commercial Farmers' Union, has been axed to death at his home.

Mr Vaughan-Evans, who was in his late seventies, was killed on the eve of his wife Jean's 80th birthday. The couple were attacked in their home in Gweru, Zimbabwe's third largest city, where Mr Vaughan-Evans represented the CFU in the Midlands Province.

The CFU president, Trevor Gifford, said Mr Vaughan-Evans, a renowned agriculturalist and conservationist, died from head wounds after he was attacked by an intruder. He said he did not yet know Mrs Vaughan-Evans's condition.

"She is frail and in a wheelchair from a previous attack, also in their home," he said. Mr Gifford said the couple had been attacked three times in the last six months, once for about £15.

President Robert Mugabe began siezing thousands of white-owned farms in 2000 and now only a few hundred remain on small portions of their original land holdings. "We still do not know details of what happened. Bob was a very important member of the CFU team," said Mr Gifford.

Zimbabwe's crime statistics are seldom disclosed, but there has been a surge of armed and violent robberies, particularly since Zimbabwe abandoned its worthless currency in January and now uses US dollars or South African rands."

-o00o-

As if we weren't aware of the bias within the ZANU PF mouthpiece, The Herald and it's sister paper the Chronicle, the radio and the television station which is run by the State...

All of these media spend their time criticising the MDC and praising ZANU PF and its leader. Even if there is nothing to criticise or praise...

"Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on Monday took a swipe at the state media for continuing to serve partisan interests to the detriment of the inclusive government, saying it’s failing in its mandate of serving the people as a true public media.

Addressing journalists at the Gweru Press Club, Tsvangirai said bias of the state media is temporary as reforms in the media to be introduced soon will ensure a divergence of views from which Zimbabweans can choose for their sources of news.

"It a fact that in contravention of both the letter and spirit of the Global Political Agreement, the state media continue to serve partisan interests, thereby failing to fulfill their mandate as a public service to the people of Zimbabwe.

"This situation is temporary as sooner rather than later market forces in the form of alternative media will enable the people of Zimbabwe to choose their sources of news on a daily basis," said Tsvangirai."

Sadly, it matters not how many times a non-ZANU PF politician states that the media has let the side down, whilst Mugabe has still got breath in his body, these badly written reports lauding him and his party will continue to be written, and the television news will be liberally laced with pro-ZANU PF stories.

-o00o-

This report does not surprise me. I have often stated that Mutambara reminds me of a young Robert Mugabe - and I have taken time to question why the smaller faction of the MDC seems to escape the oppression that the larger faction endures.

"Zimbabwean Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara on Tuesday said he was prepared to work with Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Dr Gideon Gono and pleaded with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to ensure unity in the inclusive government if the country was to proper.

Addressing small-scale miners at a function attended by PM Tsvangirai, Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe, Mines and Mining Development Minister Obert Mpofu, his deputy Murisi Zwizwai, Dr Gono and other senior Government officials in Harare, DPM Mutambara said there was more that united Zimbabweans than divided them.

"There is no family without quarrels. There is more that unites us than divides us. Governor Gono, we must work together as long as I am the Deputy Prime Minister, Prime Minister, I beg that Zimbabweans have unity of purpose," he said."

Mutambara misses the point. You don't unite for the purposes of unity. You cannot ally with another for the sake of an alliance. He, of all people, should understand this. The MDC split over senate support and attempts at a re-unification have failed - and yet he would have all of the political parties unify in government so that he can proclaim Zimbabwe unified...

And Gono is not part of the unity government insofar as he is not an elected member of that body.

"Mutambara added that Zimbabweans should unite in working for the country. Mutambara’s comments come in the wake of last week’s boycott of a Cabinet meeting by MDCT ministers and PM Tsvangirai’s recent trip to the United States and Europe PM Tsvangirai to seek a financial package to revive the economy and call for the lifting of economic sanctions. Mutambara said Zimbabwe could only overcome its current economic challenges if the inclusive Government worked as a team.

He said the country’s future lay in the exploitation of its natural resources like gold and "not aid from America or China"."

For the definition of 'exploitation', just read what Mugabe has done in the last 29 years...

"Dr Gono and Attorney General Mr Tomana have the highest qualifications for office, but what is only needed is the three principals to agree on the appointments since they were appointed by President Robert Mugabe alone without the other principals," he said then.

The small-scale miners used the occasion to present to Government the 50kg of gold that they mined using loans totaling US$1,1 million provided by the People’s Own Savings Bank and the newly established TN Bank."

Perhaps Mutambara needs to sit back and look at the damage that Mugabe has wrought, before he requests that Zimbabweans fall in line behind Mugabe's leadership...

-o00o-

And this is the country which Mutambara would have everyone unify - a country where rape, robbery and murder are commonplace.

"Police in Zimbabwe have arrested two men who raped a 24-year-old woman then fell asleep at the scene of their crime.

In a terrifying attack, the men went to the woman's home in Dulibadzimu township in Zimbabwe's border town of Beitbridge.

Posing as detectives, they ordered her to accompany them to the police station. Once outside, they dragged her to a bushy area on the banks of the Limpopo River, where they raped her - and fell asleep.

The woman sneaked away to alert her sister and security guards, who returned and carried out a citizens' arrest before police arrived.

The attack shows just how crime is spinning out of control in once-peaceful Zimbabwe."

Until such time as Mugabe stops using the police for his own personal and political gains, and allows them to perform theior function of upholding law and order, then this sort of thing will be on the increase.

"The number of armed robberies and assaults has surged since a unity government between president Robert Mugabe's ZANU PF and the former opposition Movement for Democratic Change was formed in February.

Regular bank raids, hijackings and supermarket shootouts are prompting unfavourable comparisons with neighbouring South Africa.

The latest bank to be targeted was Barclays, in the second city of Bulawayo, last Friday. Six men with pistols burst into the building and terrified tellers before getting away with $50,000, 126,000 rand and £500. Kingdom Bank, in Harare, has been targeted twice.

In Harare's Glen Norah township, residents are keeping to a 6pm curfew after a mobile phone trader was beaten to death by muggers last month.

Giles Mutsekwa, Zimbabwe's home affairs minister, believes former diamond diggers and dealers, who were removed from the Marange fields in a controversial security operation last year, are behind the crime. "They are turning to this crime because they have to maintain their lifestyles," he said. "It's a cause for concern."

Foreign nationals who entered Zimbabwe to take part in the diamond trade were also involved, he claimed."

Political aims and aspirations should be put aside and the country needs to regain some law and order.

"Canny criminals are trading on the fact that Zimbabwean businesspeople, wary of central bank raids on their accounts, are bank-shy. George Guvamatanga, the managing director of Barclays Zimbabwe, said last week that Zimbabwe banks held just £294 million in deposits, while £619 million was kept out of the system, in homes, safes or offices.

Jane Mutasa, a Harare businesswoman, was robbed at gunpoint of£12,382 and her Mercedes Benz S350 in Harare's quiet Greystone Park suburb, which is better known for its pair of roaming leopards than as a haven for robbers.

"I was ordered to get out of my vehicle by one of the accused persons, who was wearing a police uniform and armed with a pistol," she told a court last week."

-o00o-

"Ominously, despite participation by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in a cross-party government, politically motivated attacks on the party’s activists by Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe loyalists appear to have resumed.

Over the past two weeks, a party source says, a number of MDC activists from around the country have contacted the former opposition party to say they have been assaulted by supporters of Mugabe’s ZANU PF party, who, they allege, are preparing a new wave of violence for the rural areas.

The increase in violence against supporters of the MDC, which entered into a transitional government with ZANU PF last February as a means to move past disputed elections, is feared to be linked to a plan to intimidate people ahead of a constitutional referendum.

"Our intelligence is telling us the joint operations committee [Mugabe’s security council, which is made up of army generals] has decided to reform the youth militia and prepare them for a campaign of 'persuasion' that will begin in late September," according to the source."

One of the things agreed on in the two agreement signed last year was the use of political room to allow the parties to campaign peacefully and without undue influence. ZANU PF have ensured that this is not the case. They have harried, pushed and prodded the MDC and have abducted, tortured, arrested and arreigned the members and supporters of the party in an attempt to reduce the political majority that the MDC enjoys.

Enjoys? The way that Mugabe continues to lead a 'government' whilst he is not the elected leader of Zimbabwe leaves a lot to be desired. He wasn't even 'democratically' elected and relied heavily upon his militia, war veterans and others to do his dirty work.

Beyond belief...

-o00o-

I have another appointment elsewhere, so will have to wrap this up now.

Take care.

'debvhu