Donor Card Fiasco

There is much debate at the moment about how to run a more successful Donor Card scheme.

People awaiting transplants are missing out on potentially life-saving operations due to a shortage of organs.

Hospitals have for many years been telling us that, during the trauma of a bereavement, many families either don't know the wishes of the deceased, or just over-rule those wishes, which is apparently legal.

And because in most cases, no-one actually carries their donor card with them, it can be hard to determine their wishes anyway.

To me it's simple; make organ donation work on a 'presumed consent' basis, unless you are carrying an opt-out card.

Although only 30% of us have donor cards, over 57% of the public shared this sentiment in a recent survey carried out, so why don't we just do it??

It's An Outrage!!

Public apathy is a blight on the face on many campaigns designed for our benefit; recycling, voting, energy conservation, driving slower - the list goes on.

Requiring a mandatory expression of your preference NOT to donate organs would make things much easier for the Health Service, and families of both the deceased AND those in need of transplants.

How can helping to save a life be a bad thing?

BBC's Watchdog Twists The Facts

On the whole, I like the concept of the BBC programme, "Watchdog". It does a good job of exposing scams, shams and flim-flams, and fighting for better customer service. But every now and again it seems to me that they are just looking for a target to frag.

Take Friday October 13th's edition, and the story on the Airtours Travel company.

It would seem that earlier in the week their Chief Executive had said that he wanted to rid his company of "... the whinging customers.".

What he meant was that small minority without genuine complaints who are just out to get something for nothing, and enjoy complaining. Having worked with customers for the last 13 years, I know what he means!!

However, Watchdog went to town on them, using their regular bag of stats, which showed that 47% of complaints received by the programme about Airtours were to do with accommodation or resort issues. And that sounds a lot, doesn't it boys and girls?

Hang on though... Airtours ferried approximately 3 million people on holidays last year, yet Watchdog had received just under 500 complaints in total.
Even if we're generous and estimate that only a quarter of disgruntled holidaymakers chose to write in, that gives us 2000 people.

Against 3 million, that's 0.07%, meaning that Watchdog's accommodation complaints amounted to just 0.035% of the people Airtours dealt with last year. Which doesn't sound a lot anymore, does it boys and girls??

It's An Outrage!!

Now I'll admit that 2000 unhappy customers is nothing to be proud of, but the way Watchdog presented it, you'd think that Airtours were packing everybody into galleys, using whips and a fat man on drums to make them row across the Med, only to give them a two week stay in a Turkish Gulag, before parceling them in crates and posting them home by camel-mail.

Get a grip Watchdog, and deal with the real threats to consumer society. Like the EU for a start...