The Guardian today has a story about a student at Oxford who manages his money well to leave university in credit. Basically, he qualifies for every grant going and spends carefully.

While I admire his attitude, particularly his approach to spending and budgeting. However, I get really frustrated at the way he is playing the grant system.

Heaton’s mother is a single parent with a small pension and a smaller income. Because of that, he qualifies for a means-tested “Oxford Opportunity” grant of about £4,200 towards his maintenance [as well as] state maintenance grant of £2,765 from his home county council. Other “free” money comes from a college bursary of £1,000, and another from Citibank for the same amount.

At this point I have no issue. It’s nice to see a guy from a working class background having money to spend at university so he can keep up with his better off friends.

My problem comes when I read this sentence.

His father, who has continued to support him, gives him £3,000 a year, which doesn’t have to be paid back.

£3k is a significant amount of money to be able to contribute to a child per year. One can only assume that his father has a decent j0b, or significant savings. Either way, if he was registered living with his father he wouldn’t get much or any of the £9k of “free money” listed above.

I don’t expect him to own up to this or give the money back, I expect the government to close this gaping big loophole. It’s absurd that a person should be punished for having parents who live together. If this student’s parents lived together he would get up to £9,000 less per year. £27,000 over the course of his degree.

Student loans and grants should be based on both parents incomes and savings, regardless of their place of residence.

Disclosure: I’m a student with parents who live together. As a result I’m biased. Mainly because if they split up I would be up to £45,000 better off when I finish my degree.

The government is currently funding a new website for NHS Choices and it is expected to include the option for the general public to give ratings and comments based on the performance of their doctor. The idea being that it will give public services the same transparency and incentive system as Ebay and Amazon.

There are so many problems with this proposal it’s hard to know where to start.

Confidentiality is a big problem. If a patient gives a negative comment that the doctor disagrees with, they cannot adequately defend their actions publicly because of the patients right to privacy.

Who is going to regulate the system to ensure a bored teenager isn’t spamming the system, destroying a professionals reputation in the process. Surely, if that were to occur  a doctor would have a legitimate case for libel, costing the taxpayer yet more money in legal fees.

The profession is already heavily regulated. Doctors have many exams to pass and the GMC is bringing in new systems every year to ensure doctors’ skills remain up to date.

The patient needs to know that the doctor is doing what they think is best for their health, not pandering to their every demand to get good feedback. GPs have a hard enough time already getting patients to leave the consulting room without antibiotics for their cold, imagine how much worse that would be if the doctor would be punished for not meeting the patients unscientific demand.

Who are the patients that will use these systems? On ebay I’m sent a reminder by e-mail to give feedback. Under the governments proposals the public have to go to the website unprompted. If I have no issue with my GP I’m not likely to go to any real effort to publicly declare that fact. If I have a problem on the other hand, I’m very likely to shout my complaint from the rooftops.

While some patients will have legitimate issues, surely this isn’t the forum to air them. Perhaps a more reasonable system would be a private web feedback site. That way if I have an issue with my doctor I can give feedback to the practice directly and the doctor can respond to me personally. It is more likely to improve the doctor patient relationship than the alternative.

The BMJ has an interesting article and editorial on the issue this month. Dr. Rant also gave an intresting take on the issue last week.

I’m currently one of the geekier members of society in that I have a home server. It sits under my bed and get’s used for web design, backing up files and as a home to all my media files, which are then available to be streamed by the Xbox Media Centre.

It’s quite a nice thing to have and I think in the near future they are going to become ubiquitous. However, at the moment there are a few problems holding back mainstream adoption.

1. The first is function. At the moment it’s far too much hassle for too little benefit for the majority of non-geeks.
2. The second problem is the current hardware. At the moment I have an old dell dektop as my server. Made a good use for an old PC but it’s too loud to leave on overnight and I’m pretty sure it’s not very energy efficient.
3. Software poses another problem. I maintain my server using the command line. I enjoyed learning this new skill. Most people won’t.
4. The final problem is cost. People don’t like spending money on an item as dull as a server.

Possible Solution

I propose a merger of two popular existing products: netbooks and routers.

“Netbooks” are everywhere these days. Costing around £200 they work as good as most laptops.

Wireless routers are in virtually every household with broadband.

Here is how I suggest this solution would solve the problems listed above:

1. Function

The following are useful features for the average Joe.

• Central repository for personal and media files – in a house with 5+ computers plus media centre televisions it quickly becomes apparent that having everything you need on every computer is a killer feature.
• Backup device – when computers break, for the majority of people, that means the end of their files not backed up recently. With an automated device this could become a thing of the past
• Firewall – An extra layer of security never hurt anyone
• Remote access – all the media files could be accessed by devices like the iphone using something like tversity
• On top of the above there are all the geeky add-ons like bittorrent which can be added.

2. Hardware

Taking a netbook, removing the screen, graphics unit, soundcard, keyboard/touchpad, battery and hard disk would leave you with a device very similar to a router. Possibly even smaller. It would be quiet and use low energy hardware. The device would have USB ports to add external drives, thus providing as much or as little storage as the user needs.

3. Software

A sleek web interface, like a souped up version of the standard router admin page, would be the point of access for the end user. Each feature would be designed by experts to remove anything technical.

4. Cost

I suspect what I described above would be about £100’s worth of equipment. That device could do the job of your existing home router, saving £40 you’d normally spend. So you’re talking an extra cost of £60. It’s not exorbitant for the benefits gained. It could be marketed as a “router plus”.