I read today in “The Sunday Post” newspaper that our National Health Services could afford to employ another 750 nurses if they could stop the fraud that is occurring within its organisation.

Apparently in the next few days they are launching a new campaign to make employees aware of the problem with DVDs and other educational tools to make staff think about the issue and help stamp it out.
Reading that report made me want to cry and laugh at the same time.

My mind went back ten years and writing my chapter for the book Whistleblowing in the Social Services on the subject of “Acquiescence in Wrongdoing” ISBN 0 340 65245 4. I had included an extract from a survey done by the Audit Commission (a government body charged with auditing what is happening in our public bodies) that had been published four years earlier (in 1994) showing we were losing about 6 million pounds (approx 12 million dollars) a year. This did not include the laptops etc that walked out in the arms of employees and visitors and never returned. If the Audit Commission had said we had a serious problem in 1994 why it take 14 years for our government to take action?

(Oh I remember now. Some of our government ministers are currently under investigation for financial mistakes in the election campaigns so they need to deflect the newspaper headlines. Or is this just me being too cynical?)

That same report also said the commission had surveyed the Heads of Internal Audits in the various health boards and one of every five of them had said they feared they would lose their job if they reported all the weaknesses in the system that they knew about to the NHS Board of Directors. The very people employed to protect our finances against fraud were afraid to speak out. What is our country coming to? Sorry what has our country already come to?

In 1995 Mike Probert Lewis from the Institute of Internal Auditors wrote “Blowing the whistle is the short way to put yourself on the long term unemployment register”.

I know I did it!

We need people to stand up and be counted when it comes to fraud and theft. Nowadays someone who is putting in false mileage claims etc is referred to as “fiddling their expenses” and most people would turn a blind eye to it. Yet if we call it by its true name THEFT we would stand accused of not just turning a blind eye but “aiding and abetting in a serious crime”.

Maybe if we all reported every instance of expense fiddling in every organisation we would have a country rich enough to support everyone who needed our help. I would support anyone who was willing to speak out but recommend at few safety precautions to be taken to prevent the abuser turning around and passing the blame to you. I have them spelt out in full in another article. If anyone wants them please contact me using the comments box below. Your details will not be published.

Just heard today about a politician who was suggesting that a couple running a bed and breakfast in their own home would be required to have to accept guests who were Gay or Lesbian. In other words a retired couple who had strong religious biblical standards and beliefs would have to welcome people into their own home to do things which were against the standards they had lived by all their lives.

I am not attacking gay couples in this article it just happened to be sparked off by listening to the politicians statement on a local radio station. It could well have been a couple who were recovering alcoholics who wanted to keep all alcohol out of their house. It could have been a local prostitute who wanted to use their bedroom as a base for her business activities.

Do you have any principles which you would not want breaching in your own home?

For example the smell of smoking is offensive to many people that is why smoking tobacco is banned in many public buildings. The smell of cannabis being smoked would be offensive to many more people.

I would impose different standards for commercial places like larger hotels. Removing the rights of people to decide what activities they allow in their own home is going too far in my view.

When people say that statements made by evangelical Christians about our God are offensive to people of other faiths and/or no faith. Locally our city council (Aberdeen Scotland) have stopped referring officially to the Christmas holiday period and renamed it “Winter Festival” so as not to offend people who are not Christian.

The fact that many of the lights strung up across the high street showed wise men on camels and or a star over a manager in Bethlehem was officially not connected with any Christian festival concerning a birth of a young baby. Those fancy lights were to commemorate a winter time festival that just happens by sheer co-incidence to occur at Christmas-time.

Have our city officials gone mad? Or is it another way of throwing out the baby Jesus in favour of being able to be totally commercial and encourage us to do nothing connected with our church beliefs and just spend, spend, spend in the big department stores?

A short time ago there was a debate about our Equality Acts which outlawed any discrimination against other people in particular races, genders and disabled people. Quite right too in my view but where do you draw the line? Recently there was discussion started by our national politicians that a new Act would bring the various different Acts of Parliament (laws) together into one overall Law covering all groups.

However the new Act was to be broader and introduce a new offence which would outlaw discussions which hit at a particular groups of people. Nothing wrong in that one might think! But what would it mean in our church meetings? Would we have to censor the bits of the Bible we could use and miss out those chunks that said that some practices were wrong. For example I can imagine the immediate outcry that would come as soon as any Church minister said that homosexual practices was not in line with God’s will. Will that lead to Christians in our so called “Christian country” being sent to prison for reading the Bible aloud?

The fact that the Bible also says “sex outside marriage” is wrong does not seem to arouse so much opposition yet it affects so many many more people.

Our Christian beliefs are based on biblical truths written over several thousand years ago (they were first written about in The Old Testament thousands of years before the birth of Jesus) would be made illegal if we speak about them. So we would be able to speak about some of the ten commandments? For example I think it would mean we could say “thou shalt not steal or kill” but what about some of the others about worshiping only the one true God? Would we be prevented from saying that Jesus is Lord?

If we do not speak out and defend our faith now will the right to believe statements set out in our Bible be taken away from us one by one.

If we do not do something to protect our beliefs today will there be anyone left to support us when our society totally collapses and the “thought police” come after us tomorrow.

Britney Spears and her mental health problems

For weeks now all our tabloid press and celebrity gossip magazines have featured pictures of Britney Spears. The latest news which no-one could have missed was of course her being detained in a psychiatric hospital.

The fact that she is legally detained means that the problem is serious enough for medical experts to believe she is a danger to herself or others. It does not mean she has given permission for all her legal rights to privacy to be taken away from her and neither has the law done that. Yet that is what our media seems to believe.

As someone who worked in the field of mental health for nearly twenty years I got fed up of reading derogatory comments about people with mental health problems. How would you like the idea of press photographers jostling up against you taking photos of you when you are feeling and looking at your worst?

Britney is someone who has sold herself on her good looks for a lot of years. She will now be looking in a mirror and see her sunken eyes and her face looking all creased – how do you think she feels about that? And everywhere she turns there is yet another camera flashing in her face!

Why do people going through what could possibly be the part of their life so far have to be attacked and criticised in the press? Does it really matter whether she brought it upon herself by abusing drugs and alcohol?

The fact is that this a person who went through some major stresses shooting to fame and fortune at an age when she no experience of how to cope with the changes pushed on her by record companies, managers, TV producers and newspapers trying to come up with some new scandal. Did anyone go looking for stories that would give her praise?

“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” (Ephesians 4:29.)

Our Christian country, our National Health Service and Asylum Seekers

I was listening to a news item the other day about a person from Ghana who was discharged from one of our hospitals before her treatment was completed so she could be evicted from the country.

Apparently she had come to the UK and was seeking asylum to stay. She was requiring kidney dialysis treatment to stay alive but if she was sent back to her own country she would be unable to afford treatment and would probably die within months if not weeks.  The argument for kicking her out of the country was she failed to get a longer visa to stay legally so had to leave.

Today I heard a different but similar case where a woman had become HIV + after torture in her own country but this was not apparent until she had been in our country for some time. Again she was being kicked out and could not treatment back in her home country so could quickly die even through we had the drugs that would save her life.

One politician was arguing we had no responsibility to care for her and there were millions just like her who were close to death in the same way back in Africa which we were not helping so why make an exception for her. Our own hospitals had a long waiting list with people from this country dying as there was no facility to help them.

But who had to make the choice when the budget is limited. Someone has to chose who dies and who lives. Do you make those choices? How do we choose in those circumstances?

Did the Good Samaritan stay he had no responsibility or did he do what he could for the one he could help?

It reminds of a story I have heard several times in different ways over the years but it essentially goes like this.

A man was walking along the beach one morning and saw someone bending down every so often and throwing something into the sea.

Catching him up he was surprised to see it was a youth picking up a starfish and returning it the water. When asked why the youth replied because “if I don’t it will dry up here in the hot sun and die”. The older man said “but the beach goes on for miles and there are millions of these starfish you can’t make a difference to them”.

The youth replied by bending over and picking up another one and tossing it back into the water saying “but it makes a difference to this one”.

I don’t know where the money would come from to pay for everyone. That’s not my job but I do know that Jesus would have done something to have helped them and we are meant to be his body here on earth. But what can we do and how can we do it?

Anyone got any answers to help me think this through?

Ron

I have a sure fire method to destroy your marriage, your friendships, and everything else in your life.  Simply “play fair.”

Someone cuts you off in traffic? Play fair, turn on your bright lights and tailgate them…

Your spouse makes a biting comment? Play fair, give as good as you get…

Someone gossiping about you? Gossip about them.

Someone doesn’t like you? Don’t like them.

Play fair and you can live the life that many people live day in and day out..

Or maybe we simply play fair by having people meet our standards before we treat them differently. Often this balancing act is learned while growing up.

• Want approval? Earn it,
• Good grades? Earn it.
• Popularity? Earn it.
• Rewards? Earn it.
• Want a promotion? Earn it.

On and on it goes. We all know from experience we have done it at some time

“Good and fair” people watch their marriages and other relationships crumble because pride keeps them
from sacrificing and they keep playing “fair”…

Is this an appropriate lifestyle for Christians

And then there is Easter…

Jesus shared, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ’sinners’ love those who love them” (Luke 6:32).

JESUS TELLS US NOT TO PLAY FAIR!

He calls us to a HIGHER standard…

He calls us to love our enemies and pray for those who use us for their own selfish gain. His model is, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36).

How merciful is God?

Scripture tells us, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us”  (Romans 5:8).

Easter is about receiving a gift we didn’t earn, a love we didn’t work for, a forgiveness we never could have purchased.

It is also about a Savior taking a punishment that wasn’t his, but willingly laying down his life to save us. The Kingdom of God and the message of Easter are anything but fair, something for which we can be eternally grateful.

And thinking about the message of Easter BEFORE we act in our relationships can help us to transform our marriage
starting TODAY!

Have a wonderful Easter and give NOT being fair a try…

You just might be amazed at the changes in your marriage and life.