Exercise 5: “A Visit To The Doctor”
For this exercise you will require:
1 (one) trapped sciatic nerve
1 (one) Parisian Doctor
10 (ten) years of French lessons, long ago - as evidenced by your spontaneous answer to being asked your age: (dix-huit), which isn’t strictly true anymore, is it?
Curtains, eye-patch, sabre (optional)
1 (one) “local” non-French woman who will actually help you find a doctor - a doctor who will then speak “English” to you.
Approach the doctor’s office. This will be a dingy room in a building with no receptionist, but will have a table covered with copies of Paris Match from January last year.
Finally be called into office. Explain (in English) that you think the sciatic nerve is trapped. At this stage the doctor may look at your female companion and pointedly ask how that happened - tell him the story about the train. “That is a good one”, he will say.
After being poked and prodded, be told “eet ees the nerf sciatique”
You will also be told; “you must take all these tablets” and “no movement of the hips” - watch your female companion bang her head on the desk.
Now comes the interesting part: discussing payment. “Do you have health insurance?” you will be asked.
“Of course, I have comprehensive private health insurance” you’ll reply.
“Because if you don’t, I can write the name and address of someone else on the form, who does have health insurance”, he’ll offer. Explain to the doctor that you do not wish to be involved in health insurance fraud (unless there’s a big slice of cash in it for you).
“That’ll be twenty Euros”, he’ll say, which you’ll hand over and wonder if defrauding the health insurers of €20 would have been worth it, after all.
Then head to the pharmacie to collect the plethora of brand-name drugs on the prescription.
“€11.54″ the pharmacist will ask for - and also give you aother form to claim the costs back.
The total cost will therefore be €31.54. You have a €30 excess on your insurance. A stamp to put on the claim from would cost 55 cents, leaving the possibility of reclaiming 99 cents from the whole adventure.
Explain why the French medical system is great (well, the side-effects of the drugs mean that I can sell any I have left over at the main station here and more than cover my costs), and formulate an open letter of thanks to the people of France who subsidise the health system.
Song playing as this was published: India Arie “Video”
This sounds like the perfect place to schlepp yourself to after a not so successful bank robbery in Paris.
Since you have taken up civil liberties issues like the planned UK ID card, can I possibly interest you in commenting on an event that the Economist in the following fashion: “The police, who have reportedly been given secret new shoot-to-kill orders to prevent suicide-bombs being detonated, cornered him in a carriage of the train and, in front of terrified passengers, pumped five bullets into his head.”
Re your back: Are you feeling better now? If not, get well soon.
JCS: Yes, returned last night - and although not completely cured, I am actually mobile now. Thanks for the get well soon sentiments.
Re: Shoot to kill policy of suspected terrorist bombers. I regard not being blown up by someone wearing an explosive vest filled with ball-bearings pretty much a civil liberty too. Obviously I don’t condone the shooting of people on the grounds that they’re Brazilian electricians, I don’t know how else the police can stop someone who they suspect of being a suicide bomber when he’s close to a group of people. From what I’ve read the guy was actually being held on the ground by officers, one of whom obviously thought he wasn’t restrained enough, i.e. still had the possibilitiy of pressing the “loud” button - and decided to follow what I suppose is standard operating procedure and permanently immobilise him with the use of (at last word) eight low velocity bullets.
As for being “secret” shoot to kill suicide bombers orders, I can remember reading about them in the aftermath of Sep 11th.
EDIT: The “Shoot to kill suicide bombers” orders was brought in 6 months after Sep 11th 2001 and called Operation Kratos
With some reservations, I’m not sure that I can blame the policeman that did it. He was following a man from a (admittedly multi-party) house that was under surveillance as being a base of one of the terrorists, he was wearing a large, bulky coat (who knew what was underneath, just that it stood out in an English summer - the fact that he might be more used to sunnier Brazilian skies was, at the time, unknown), at some point he was challenged by armed police and ran off, into a tube station, jumping over the barriers and into a crowded train. I’m not happy about it, it makes me feel sick, to be honest, but I understand why it could have happened. The fact that he was only shot when he was in the presence of other passengers, rather than just running off, speak to me of restraint, rather than gun-crazy policing.
The policy needs refining at higher levels and being made VERY public: “Do not run off from armed police officers who tell you to stop, or we’ll shoot”, seems sensible advice. And while I’m aware that not all police policy should be public - especially in counter-terrorist operations, I am a believer in policing by consent of the public and policy regarding the use of deadly force should be open to public scrutiny.
As I said, I’m not particularly happy about what are, in-effect, extra-judicial killings. I just can’t think of any other way to stop would-be suicide bombers. I can’t imagine it being what some have called a shoot Asians policy - in a city with as large an asian population as London - it’s around 50% in the areas I know well. I know I’m projecting my values onto the police here, but if every (say) fourth or fifth person is of Asian origin, someone is going to have to be acting pretty strangely to attract real suspicion. To be honest, I’m more disturbed about the effect this may have on relations between the police and parts of society they’re meant to be protecting. In an extremely perverse way, I’m glad they shot a Catholic Brazilian, rather than a British Muslim - I don’t think I need to stress that I’m not “glad” they shot any innocent. My ideas on this are still pretty much in flux, but I can tell you that if I was an armed police officer in London at the moment, following someone who I had good reason to believe was a suicide bomber, who spoke English and ran off after being challenged in a tube station, I’d have wanted a large calibre, sighted weapon that would have taken his head off with one round, at distance, before he got anywhere near a carriage full of passengers. I’m not sure how I’d have felt about myself afterwards when I found out he wasn’t a suicide bomber at all.
I’m also not sure what “correct” policy should be, but unless officers get into the habit of regularly shooting the wrong person, I’d rather run the risk of being shot mistakenly than being blown up by a suicide bomber who the police could have stopped, but failed to shoot, because they had strict new guidelines after the de Menezes blunder. This is kind of a relative position, I know, and is probably going to change, either slightly or significantly based on argumentation with others and future events.At the moment I’m reading a quote from the head of the Met. Police In a Channel 4 News interview, Sir Ian said:
Not trying to deflect criticism here - related question. RAF terrorists that were shot in gun battles with police, and the members who committed suicide in Stammheim after Landshut/Hanns-Martin Schleyer affair. Do you believe the official version of events - particulary that Andreas Baader managed to get a gun smuggled into a high-security prison with a wing specially built for RAF terrorists, with which to shoot himself in the head?
Acting pretty strangely. Hmm.
The problem is, of course, that there is no foolproof profile. Would-be bombers know what the police are looking for and adjust accordingly. It is, in fact, very common, for the young men recruited to extremist groups to act and dress in a perfectly secular manner to divert suspicion.
Some of the signs the Met says to look out for include muttering to themselves, which makes me a target.
The problem with suspicious behavior is that it depends who’s doing the suspecting.
EasyJetsetter:
As I said, my ideas on this are in constant fkux. Terrorists will adapt away from whatever the profile is. Can we expect that if the profile is “dressed as secular muslims”, to see the next lot dressed as orthodox Jews? Running away from armed police who tell you to stop, the day after a second wave of attempted terrorist attacks in London in two weeks, still doesn’t sound like a wise move though.
Bearing in mind the dificulty of IDing a suicide bomber, the long term strategy has to be to infiltrate radicalised groups - the chances of spotting suicide bombers on a day-to-day basis is as good as nil. I suspect that the idea that there were four failed suicide bombers running around London from the day before, highly increased the probability of the shooting last Friday as well.
Added: I didn’t know you’d written about this, the comment I wrote above is what I thought before I started reading the thoughts of Worstall, Nosemonkey et al. i.e. they’re my baseline thoughts before outside influence got to them.
Sciatic Nerve trouble is a bummer. I have had it for a few years now. recently I have tried Osteopathy and this seems to work. Lots of poking and prodding going on but it does the trick. I’ve had injections & painkillers in the past but that only relieves the pain, and doesnt sort out the root problem.
I don’t trust the French from my school days anymore. I actually used to speak it fluently but German has taken over (I must be one of those bilinguals).
I have this private insurance (because I work freelance) and it provides insurance for expats. It’s one of those, pay now - claim later, plans but it’s quite good. I mean if I were to get private german insurance I’d be paying about EUR350+. I pay EUR65 for the one i have now- I only need it for emergencies anyways cos I don’t really get ill that often.
watch, now that I’ve said that I’ll get the flu or something
|
haddock:
“Sciatic Nerve trouble is a bummer” Well it’s more the right buttock (and leg) actually, but I understand what you mean…
Belinda:
I had some faith in my French - reading is still sort of okay, but people speak too fast for me to follow conversations and I can’t formulate sentences anymore.
As for health insurance, my private (also pay now, claim later) completely comprehensive insurance costs me less than I paid to the Technische Krankenkasse when I was a Doktorand.