Another big plummet in #homeopathy on the NHS England

NB - these figures relate to England only. 

There should be zero homeopathy items being dispensed on the NHS, costing zero pounds but because the prescription cost documents are published every April I assume they capture part of the preceding year.

The new prescription costs were published today and can be found here: Prescription Cost Analysis - England 2019. For previous editions see this page.

The relevant bit is in this spreadsheet
Prescription Cost Analysis 2019 – Statistical summary tables [Excel: 3.8MB] - I used Edit / Find&Replace as a way to quickly find all instances of homeop via a whole workbook search. I also checked for the variant spelling homoeop but didn't find anything.

The Chemical Substances (ho!) tab gives the overview / average and it's in Row 1764 - 2,188 items were dispensed (last year 3,295) costing £48,109.32 (last year £55,044) with the cost per item having risen by about £5 to £21.99 (compared with £16.71 last year).

The NHS dispensed a third fewer homeopathy items in 2019 than it did in 2018. Hopefully this asymptotic crawl to zero will speed up a bit in future.

Image above shows the number of homeopathic items dispensed and the cost, click to enlarge or use the text version below.

Table One

Dispensed items	Of which class 2 items	Total cost (£)	Cost per item (£)
2,188	0	48,109.32	21.99

More detail in the Presentations tab, Rows 11708 and 11709.

Table Two

Dispensed items	Of which class 2 items	Total quantity	Total cost (£)	Cost per item (£)	Cost per quantity (£)	Quantity per item
529	0	49,491	3,231.72	6.11	0.07	93.56
1,659	0	120,544	44,877.60	27.05	0.37	72.66

Make your own heraldic bunting for #Buntingmas

You don't need a printer for any of this :)

If you don't have any paper but do have a laptop / phone / pad you can create your own online heraldic flags here, with some suggested 'code' to type in at the end (see DrawShield below)

#Buntingmas starts tomorrow (11th April) and is a made-up (by me) festival to bring more bunting into our lives and homes. Take a photo of your bunting and tag it with #Buntingmas (Twitter / Instagram).

If you hate bunting this is possibly not the festival for you but to be fair it's probably quite easy to ignore - it's not like the Royal Wedding or the Olympics where bunting was unavoidably ubiquitous. This bunting will mostly be in people's houses, though I'm looking forward to photos of socks on washing lines - pretty much anything you can think of counts as bunting during #Buntingmas.

Unless you already have ready-made bunting to hand (yes that counts) the quickest and simplest bunting involves folding a bit of paper into a concertina and cutting out a half-V shaped notch that produces lots of bunting when unfolded, the second simplest involves folding a sheet of paper in a slightly different way then cutting out the resulting triangle shapes and decorating / hanging them.

The first one needs scissors (harder without but probably not impossible!), the second one doesn't though it's neater if you have them to hand.

Heraldic bunting ideas
The bunting below will definitely be easier with scissors. If you don't have coloured pens or pencils you could just use black and white patterns, or even use cross-hatching to represent colours. Make up your own colour scheme.

The image above shows cross-hatching to represent colours used in heraldry - white for Argent (silver or white), black dots on a white background for Or (gold or yellow), horizontal lines for Azure (blue), vertical lines for Gules (red), horizontal & vertical cross-hatching for Sable (black), diagonal lines running down from top left to bottom right for Vert (green) and diagonal lines running up from bottom left to top right for Purpure (purple). Source: Boutell's Heraldry (1963)

1. Draw a series of blank shield shapes (inspiration) onto pieces of paper 
If you don't have scissors then you could draw the shields next to each other with a small distance between, in a sort of bunting pattern! If your paper is thin enough you could lay it on your device screen and very carefully draw round an on-screen shield shape.

If you have a ruler available choose a width that can easily be divided into six for the checky pattern (see 48 in the top panel on the right below).

2. Decorate them
3. Photograph and share on social media, tagged #Buntingmas
4. (Optional) Cut them out, stick or hang them up in some way then photograph and share.

Images above are simple designs used to illustrate the naming conventions in heraldry - click to enlarge. Source: Boutell's Heraldry (1963)


I rather like 'lozengy' and 'gyronny' and used them in my own heraldic bunting shields, most of which were taken from the book about heraldry I have and some were made up. I used tracing paper to copy a general shield design from the book and used that to create a bunch of blank shields, then I used either ruler and pencil to mark out shapes or traced them. The riverbus logo (looks a bit like a boat, though not much like a galleon) I traced off my iPhone screen which was quite fiddly.

Then I coloured them in, cut them out and taped them to a bit of string before hanging on my living room door.

If you do have a printer and want to use my design help yourself (there's a gap where I made a mistake!).

  

The pic above on the left is the one I drew and scanned in (photographed with phone), the one on the right is the resulting line drawing produced after running it through (free) Inkscape.

The coloured-in heraldic shields

     

I used a bit of string to hang up my bunting but you could just arrange it on a table or the floor to take a photograph.


Book of Traceable Heraldic Art
http://heraldicart.org/



Using DrawShield (no printer / no paper needed)
The DrawShield website will let you create shields using a 'blazon' (the language used to describe a shield). You can learn more about blazons and blazonry here.

One of two of my shields are not exactly valid, heraldically-speaking, but try inputting the following blazons to create some shields (then try reversing the order of colours or changing them completely).

• Or a chevron tenné = gold / yellow with an orange chevron
• Purpure a bar tenné = purple with a horizontal orange bar 
• Quarterly, per fess wavy, tenné and azure = split in four, wiggly horizontal line, orange & blue 
• Argent a gurges purpure = White / silver shield with a variant 'gurges' (whirlpool) of purple. The concentric circles shown here is less common, pinched from the family De Gorges' shield, the more common variant (same blazon) results in a spiral pattern.
• Checky gules and argent = checkerboard pattern, red and white / silver
• Barry dancetty vert and gules = Wiggly horizontal lines, shield is green, wiggly lines are red
• Or, three fleurs de lis vert = gold / yellow shield with 3 fleur de lis flowers on it 
• Gules a sun or = red shield, gold sun
• Azure a ship argent = blue shield, white ship (in my own case it's the logo for the River Bus)
• Gyronny of vert and azure = repeating panels of green and yellow (try 'gyronny of six vert and azure' for a variant)
• Tenné a fleam or = Orange / brown (I think modern heraldry distinguishes these colours but Ye Olde version just treated it as one) shield with a gold / yellow fleam.
• Lozengy sable and argent = lozenge pattern in black and silver / white
• Argent a hound tenné passant = White / silver shield, brown dog 'striding' (facing left with right forepaw raised)
• I did a cat (argent) one too on a green (vert) shield
• And a non-heraldic bunting upon bunting one. The thing that looks like a pair of yellow and red pants is actually Or, two flaunches gules (Gold/yellow with red flanches / flaunches)

Previous adventures in Buntingmas
An even easier way to make bunting from folded paper - no printer needed #Buntingmas (9 April 2020)
Remember the chain of paper dolls you made as a child, cutting out a half person shape on folded paper then unfolding and producing a chain of people holding hands? Same, but with bunting.

#Buntingmas (it's 11 Apr): How to make low-tech bunting from paper (Wed 1 April 2020)
Folding paper and producing the flags which can then be taped to string, hole punched, glued, blue tacked to the wall or damped and stuck to the window (or just arranged artfully on a table). If you've use water-solube pens etc to decorate them you might want to give the 'damp and stick to window' a swerve, but I stuck a blank bunting to my window on 1 April and it's still there.

How will you celebrate Buntingmas? Craft ideas and classroom activities (Sat 28 Dec 2019)
This post lists some craft options including cake decorations (roll out some icing, cut vaguely triangular shapes, stick on a cake), bunting can be knitted or crocheted, made from modelling clay, actual fabric, paper or you might prefer to draw some online bunting.

The post also has some suggestions about using patterns on flags in communication - eg maritime signal flags, or using the position of flags as the communication (eg semaphore).  Not mentioned in the post is heraldry (another post is coming on that topic) but there's a link to an article about kids making their own coat of arms or personal flag by dividing a shield or flag shape into four and then drawing some favourite things in each segment.

An even easier way to make bunting from folded paper - no printer needed #Buntingmas

My clever friend Yasmin sent me this simplified bunting pattern, which makes a string of small bunting flags (plus the connecting 'rope') from a piece of paper, in the manner of folding-and-cut-once to make a string of people.

Here's her drawing, click on it to enlarge. Below is the result when I tried it out (my paper is quite thick so I didn't fold it all the way across as it would have been hard to cut).

If you're celebrating #Buntingmas (it starts this Saturday and carries on throughout lockdown, or as long as you want really) then this is possibly the quickest and simplest way of generating some bunting (short of already having bunting ready - all possibly forms of bunting are valid). Some more ideas are in the blog posts linked at the end.

Instructions: fold one edge of a piece of A4 (or any) paper then continue folding in a concertina style back and forth to end up with a piece of paper that looks like lots of letter W when looked at from the side. Cut out a small perpendicular notch, then angle the scissors down to form a pointed half triangle to join the other side. Once cut and unfolded this will produce a string of triangles with a connecting piece between them - a string of bunting, ready to be decorated.

A photograph of one string of bunting made using the method above, showing the unfolded points forming a single string of bunting. Multiple strings can be made from one piece of paper - the flags are small and will probably stick to a window just with water if you don't have glue or other sticky things (or prefer not to use).

You can then trim off the top section (shown on the left in this picture) and repeat the process multiple times down your folded concertina strip.

Take a picture and share it using the tag #Buntingmas :) 

Previously in #Buntingmas
#Buntingmas (it's 11 Apr): How to make low-tech bunting from paper (Wed 1 April 2020)
Folding paper and producing the flags which can then be taped to string, hole punched, glued, blue tacked to the wall or damped and stuck to the window (or just arranged artfully on a table). If you've use water-solube pens etc to decorate them you might want to give the 'damp and stick to window' a swerve, but I stuck a blank bunting to my window on 1 April and it's still there.

How will you celebrate Buntingmas? Craft ideas and classroom activities (Sat 28 Dec 2019)
This post lists some craft options including cake decorations (roll out some icing, cut vaguely triangular shapes, stick on a cake), bunting can be knitted or crocheted, made from modelling clay, actual fabric, paper or you might prefer to draw some online bunting.

The post also has some suggestions about using patterns on flags in communication - eg maritime signal flags, or using the position of flags as the communication (eg semaphore).  Not mentioned in the post is heraldry (another post is coming on that topic) but there's a link to an article about kids making their own coat of arms or personal flag by dividing a shield or flag shape into four and then drawing some favourite things in each segment.

#Buntingmas (it's 11 Apr): How to make low-tech bunting from paper

Before the Great Coronavirus Pandemic of March (and beyond) 2020 I had planned to invite myself round to various chums' houses in April, or invite them to mine, to celebrate #Buntingmas with wine, cake, and bunting.

Buntingmas (11 April 2020) is a festival to celebrate bunting, which I always associate with springtime, blossoms, April, Victoria sponge cake and general pleasantness outdoors, with the sun shining (but not too much). There's probably lemonade too.

Bunting always seems a cheerful thing and we need extra cheering during the Coronavirus lockdown, so let's buntify our environs hyperlocally (garden / house / flat / quarantine room). Then take photographs of it and share it on social media, or just enjoy it quietly at home.

From my previous post in December, "How will you celebrate Buntingmas? Craft ideas and classroom activities" -

"The very simple aim of Buntingmas is to 'put up' some bunting in whatever way 'put up' is relevant for you. If you hate bunting don't do that and instead you are merely encouraged to 'put up with' bunting."

Some people will have ready-made bunting, or have sewing machines and fabric, others will have printers and can either design and print their own (I've used PowerPoint and the Insert Shape tool to fill a page with tesselated triangles - help yourself to mine) or print them from the internet.

But here is a way of making some very low-tech paper bunting.

1. How to make paper bunting

1. Find a bit of paper (or part of a cereal packet)
2. Cut triangles from it (if you have scissors)
3. Draw on them for decoration (coloured pens, pencils, crayons, glitter etc)
4. Arrange them, photograph them and share them on Twitter (or Instagram or wherever)
5. If you have string or thread and tape or blue tack you could (a) poke holes in the corners with a needle or hole punch (if you have one of those!) or (b) fold the top edge over some string or thread, trim the bit now sticking out (if you want) and then hang a chain of them up somewhere. Paper flags will, if slightly wetted, stick to windows unless you've recently cleaned them.

Here's a simple way of creating some flags from a piece of paper (I used A4 in the example below) - just fold it into triangles and then tear (or cut) along the lines.

2. Bunting from paper folded first in three, then folded into triangles

This method will make at least 18 flags from A4 paper. You can probably squeeze one or two more from the bit left over at the end but they might not be the same size.

 Right click, open in new tab / window to enlarge the image

Fold the sheet lengthwise into thirds to letterbox it, then fold one corner back onto the letterbox and then keep doing so (but in a concertina fashion, not over on top of itself as you won't get really crisp edges) to end up with lots of triangles, displayed below.

18 flags made from folded and torn paper (no scissors used).

3. Pointier bunting from paper folded in two, then folded into triangles

This method will make at least 10 flags.

Fold the sheet in half lengthwise then fold the corner back to any point on the opposite side, such that the shape of the triangle formed is pointedly bunting-like and reasonably even-looking (you are going to trim it anyway). Then do the concertina back and forth folding as above to end up with the shape at the end. Cut or tear off the bits at the open end - I drew a rough line across to guide me but corrected with my scissors.

     2. The unfolded concertina                                       3. 10 flags, possibly more from leftover paper

In picture (3) above some of the flags are positioned on top of the leftover paper to show that more flags could be cut out, making 13 in all.

4. Decorating your bunting
Block colour, stripes, polka dots, doodles, minimalist-plain - it's all good. If you're looking for some inspiration try typing doodle ideas or bunting patterns into Google or any other search engine and scrolling through the images. Or pick any theme you like and use Google's filter to show only line drawings (Tools > Type > Line drawings... or choose Clip Art).

5. Displaying your bunting
Take a photo, share it, tag it #Buntingmas. If you don't have tape, blue tack, string or drawing pins to hang it up (vertical bunting, the usual orientation) it's very acceptable to share temporarily horizontal table bunting or floor bunting.

6. Buntingmas FAQ
When is Buntingmas?
11th April 2020 but much like Christmas it can last quite a long while (as long as you like really and I recommend keeping the bunting up until we're released from quarantine). For example Christmas Day is on 25 December but shops are selling festive tat several weeks (months) in advance, and of course the decorations can stay up until 6 January (the Mondayest day of the new year, whatever day it actually falls on). I have Smallest Bunting from Flying Tiger (it's tiny!) permanently installed in my kitchen (see previous post for pictures).

Why is Buntingmas?
Just for fun.

When should I take down the bunting?
a) never b) whenever you feel like it.