Initial confusion

Jan over the road reminds me that LMS just used to mean Local Management of Schools; one of those sets of initials that formed the subject of endless discussions amongst my friends and family, almost all of whom are teachers. I was always an outsider trying to keep up with it but mostly just letting the words wash over me. My particular LMS is not so easy to ignore and unfortunately I don't think there are enough professionals chewing the fat about it in middle class kitchens in order that anyone is going to do anything about it.

It's not the only set of initials that has suddenly taken on a new meaning. It's as if as soon as I retired from my strange job on the fringes of the NHS the whole world of acronyms changed too. I used to be a NED, that used to mean a Non-Executive Director, I was even a chair once, no not a piece of furniture a sort of leader, I used to run conferences for NEDs and train them in what to do. Now in a matter of a few short weeks NED becomes the height of my ambitions as NED now means No Evidence of Disease. We no-hopers don't have remission it seems but some get NED for a while and we all try to join their club.

Even BPC has changed. Up till last week even that stood for British Pharmaceutical Conference; one of the events my company helped to run and the subject of the vast majority of my email conversations. It wasn't easy! Now it's "Bill Peeples’ Angiogenesis Inhibitor Cocktail"; a list of unspellable ingredients that lots of people who are NED in the US ingest in order to stay NED.

RFA used to be the Renewable Fuels Agency and we used to chat them up when we ran the EA (Environment Agency)event now its Radio Frequency Ablation, one of the ways they can blast your lungs free of mets for awhile in the UK; if they think it wise.

So LMS, after RFA or BPC or GDR (the Dresden connection) let's have you giving me a bit of NED PDQ