Thank you to the person who made me aware of this quote from C.S. Lewis:
You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.
I wonder if Alice knew that?
Many tell me they are only one person and can’t save the world. Others tell me they are too old to worry about the future as they won’t be alive to be a part of it. Still others tell me it’s too late and the damage is already done, so what will be, will be. And a small minority don’t believe anything is wrong at all and that life has gone back to the ‘old normal’.
With such a diverse range of opinions, it is easy to become disheartened, and perhaps the so-called ‘riots’ have left people feeling hopeless. We have come this far, however, and we are still sane! If you are reading this, you have not succumbed to the spell that has been cast over so many. We must count our blessings and remember that we are far from alone, even though it may feel like that sometimes. It is up to each of us to do our bit, however small it is. When my 86-year-old mum told me she was too old to do anything, I reminded her that people her age could avoid the self-service checkouts at supermarkets by insisting on a cashier, and she agreed with me. If we all avoided buying from the big corporations and stuck with local suppliers, it would cause mayhem. Sometimes it is the smallest of gestures that collectively make the most impact, and they are legal and peaceful!
I tend to venture out in either the early mornings or the late evenings to pick up shopping. Summer in Cornwall generally means the roads are gridlocked with holidaymakers and visitors to the area during the day. Usually, I get grumpy, and I can’t wait until the school holidays are over, so we get our roads and our infrastructure back to ourselves. This year, I have paused for thought and enjoyed watching the ‘normality’ of families, loaded with chairs, windbreaks, picnics, buckets, and spades piling down to the beach. Listening to children nagging their parents for ice cream, chips,or a keepsake from the local beach shop reminded me of the times my children did the same, and in a strange way, itwas a reassuring sign that despite the last four years, some things never change. Just hearing the kids enjoying themselves and seeing them smiling was a breath of fresh air for my soul.
Personally, I am relieved the Olympics are now over. The closing ceremony was as dark as the opening ceremony, in my opinion. One thing is for sure: the 2024 Olympics won’t be forgotten, although perhaps for the wrong reasons. Were those medals worth it?
Disturbance, Disruption and Chaos Spills Over Into the NHS
After a week of ‘riots’ it appears that, by and large, the streets have quietened down. Perhaps this has happened because Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Prosecutor (oops, excuse me, Prime Minister), has made available 500 prison cells for the‘rioters’ found guilty of breaking the law. When I heard he was releasing prisoners early, I commented to Mike Robinson that perhaps it was to make room for those who refused to comply with the Government’s narrative. Perhaps the ‘rioters’ will also be released early. Clearly Sir Keir is anticipating more trouble, as he has cancelled his holiday to remain on high alert. I am very saddened that a library in Liverpool was targeted, resulting in the burning of hundreds of books. If you can see my eyebrow raising, you’ll understand why. Book burning is not a new practice.
What did shock me, however, was reading Daily Record’s report that ‘far-right thugs’ had been throwing rocks at Filipino nurses on their way to work in a hospital. Throwing rocks at anyone is not only dangerous and terrifying, but also unacceptable on every level. On a personal note, I have worked with Filipino nurses. They have been part of our NHS for decades. I have always found them to be kind, enthusiastic, and very hardworking. Perhaps at this point it is worth noting that the NHS is an employer for over 200 nationalities. Let that sink in. And 265,000 out of 1.5 million NHS staff reported a non-British nationality in June, 2023. I would like to ask if statements such as this one from our Health Secretary, given to the Mail, inflame the situation: ’People who are abusing NHS staff can be turned away, and should be turned away, if that is the way that they are treating our staff’.
Perhaps Wes Streeting has forgotten the founding principle of the NHS. The NHS belongs to the people, for the people. Has that changed to ‘The NHS belongs to the people who comply, for some of the people’? Has the NHS become a service that is conditional on compliance, or does it still have compassion for everyone, regardless of their views and opinions? In my day, we rarely heard of any incident involving racial abuse or indeed any other kind of abuse. Perhaps abuse in 2024 wasn’t considered abuse in 1976. One thing is for sure: as student nurses, we were well looked after by the NHS, our training hospitals, and our nursing home wardens. It was a completely different landscape. If you fail to look after your staff, how can you expect them to look after patients?
Nurses and doctors are used to some patients who are more difficult than others. Everyone is different, and therefore will react differently to a hospital environment. When I was nursing, patients who appeared angry or upset were often just scared and nervous. There was nothing that a cup of tea, a chat, and a phone call to home wouldn’t put right. It really wasn’t rocket science. Nurses were the bridge between home and hospital. It was often the nurses who would hang back from a doctor’s round to explain to overwhelmed patients and relatives what the doctors had actually said and what it meant. Communication, honesty, and clear messaging were important. After all, what does all the medical jargon mean in plain English?
Why are we now hearing of constant attacks on staff through verbal, physical, and racial abuse? Is it because staff are not listening to the patients and their families? Are medical staff not able to communicate efficiently? Can they speak English? Why are families reporting to me that they are not consulted at any stage of their loved one’s care? Are families feeling excluded, unsure of what is going on, and worried that their loved one is being cared for safely? Are patients feeling as though they have no control over their life or death anymore? Have we become a nation of fearful,reluctant patients, too scared to use the NHS, even if we really need to? If the answer is yes, we have a serious problem.
I make no apologies for reminding people about what nursing was like in my day. It is important that we don’t normalise bad practice. It is valuable to remember how important a strong family presence is to both patients and staff. Today, it appears that family members are regarded as a nuisance, a challenge, or a hindrance. When patients are very sick, very elderly, or frail, it is a Godsend to have relatives on the ward. In an ideal world, there would be one nurse caring for each patient. In my day, we were given a maximum of eight patients to care for, and they would span all dependencies, with perhaps one or two high-dependency patients requiring more care. The rest were medium or low dependency, which included those who could care for themselves or were near to discharge. Families were our‘regulators’; nothing got past them, and if there was a problem, we could deal with it early and nip it in the bud. Families were welcomed and encouraged, but today it appears that they are discouraged, disrespected, and simply dismissed.
Having relatives present to feed their loved ones, to encourage them to drink, to talk to them, and to be there for them is not only helpful to staff, but also vital to patients. Today, I am hearing anecdotally of incidents where one nurse may be caring for up to 14 patients, many of whom will need intense help with turning, washing, feeding, drinking, and mobilising.
The birth of NHS Trusts in 1991 anonymised staff and hospitals. It ripped their core beliefs, values, and training from them. Has the Trust model worked, 33 years on? Before Trusts, each hospital was responsible for governing itself. There was individuality, a sense of family, and camaraderie. If there was a complaint, everyone knew ‘the buck stopped’ with Matron and the Senior Consultants. Today, a faceless and often nameless bunch of bureaucrats are trained to make any form of complaint or challenge as hard as possible, with most of them working from invisible offices or from home. From the get-go, families appear to be set up to fail. The PALS they invite you to confide in are not your‘pals’ at all; they are tokenistic and impersonal. In my experience, they are hopeless. Any attempt to challenge the system is often met with delays, obfuscation, and stonewalling. If anyone reading this has had a good experience, please let me know.
Stories in Brief
Schools to wage war on fake news
Revamping the school curriculum is a priority for Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson. Children as young as five years old will be given the ‘critical thinking skills’ to identify ‘putrid’ misinformation online, under her new plan. It appears the government is using the ‘riots’ to propagandise our most vulnerable and innocent. After a 13-year-old boy was charged on Saturday with violent disorder in Manchester, Phillipson told the Telegraph:
It’s more important than ever that we give young people the knowledge and skills to be able to challenge what they see online. That’s why our curriculum review will develop plans to embed critical skills in lessons to arm our children against the disinformation, fake news and putrid conspiracy theories awash on social media.
On a personal note, speaking as a mother of five and a grandmother of five, it is far healthier to teach a five-year-old how to climb trees, run up hills and down dales, play with friends, and enjoy being a child than it is to teach them about so-called ‘misinformation’. And who precisely will teach our beautiful little souls about it? Will it be Marianna Spring (who lied and misinformed the public over her CV), or the Dark Arts master himself, Professor Sander Van Der Linden? He markets himself as:
Professor of Psychology at the University of Cambridge aka ‘Cambridge's Defence Against the Dark Arts’ Teacher and I study the psychology of influence and misinformation. I will be posting short videos with insights from my book FOOLPROOF: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity’.
One thing is for certain: the ‘riots’ have proven to be the perfect Trojan horse for whatever agenda the government wishes to roll out. Foolproof? No, I don’t think so.
NHS to roll out six new specialist gender centres for children and young people
By 2026, the NHS will have opened six new specialist regional centres to provide ‘tailored gender services’ to children and young people. Following the Cass Report, there have been new announcements from the NHS regarding how they will ‘transform’ gender healthcare services. Already open are two new centres led by Great Ormond Street Hospital in London and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool. Subject to academic approval, recruitment for a clinical trial into the potential benefits and harms of puberty suppressing hormones for children and young people is likely to start in early 2025.
NHS staff ask men if they are pregnant before X-ray scans
Another controversial policy has been rolled out at some NHS hospitals. Radiographers have been instructed to ask all men aged 12-55 if they are pregnant before performing X-rays. Aimed at non-binary, transgender and intersex patients, it has caused outrage amongst patients and campaigners.
The story in the Sunday Telegraph follows an incident in which a ‘transgender man’ unknowingly underwent a CT scan whilst pregnant. The policy of questioning both men and women has had huge consequences, leaving many women in tears and men storming out of appointments, including one patient on an urgent cancer pathway, choosing to abandon the appointment in anger. How would you feel if you were asked what your gender was? I have been, and I was furious! I replied, ‘Do I not look, speak and act like a woman’? I was hugely offended, as was the nursing assistant who asked me.
Nurses and Midwifery Council give themselves a pay rise
I have been reporting for months on the huge failings of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), not least their latest damning report of a dysfunctional culture that threatens public safety. An independent review highlighted safeguarding concerns and found that employees had experienced racism, discrimination, and bullying. Despite apologising and accepting the findings, it is simply breathtakingly shocking, although not surprising, that they have given themselves a pay rise. Please remember that nurses have been fighting hard to get a pay rise. It seems the NMC don’t need to fight anyone, and a simple apology is all that is required. Really? Rewarding those for bad behaviour appears to be a trend. The NMC, not to be outdone, have not only given themselves a pay rise but they also have millions in reserve.
To my nursing colleagues: that is your money. All is far from fine at the nursing regulator; the newly appointed CEO Dawn Broderick had to resign following a racism row. Here is another regulator that is rotten from the top down. Who regulates the regulator? I wish it was our audience.
UK Government announces artificial intelligence funding
The NHS will be one of the beneficiaries to receive a share of £32,000,000 funding in artificial intelligence (AI). It probably won’t surprise you to learn that pharmacies will benefit. Anteam will work with retail and health to improve delivery using AI algorithms. According to the Health Foundation, there is support for this; they surveyed 7,201 members of the public and 1,292 health service staff. Do you know anyone who was asked? Considering there are 68 million of us living in the UK, with 1.5 million employed by the NHS, it seems to be a tiny cohort. Do you trust AI to diagnose you and dispense medicines to you? Do you think it won’t happen? It already has.
Ambulance response times: Cornwall worst with an average time of over an hour wait
HSJ have just published the data from NHS England on the average ‘Category 2’ response time by integrated care system area for the first time. The average wait for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly was one hour and eight minutes. It was the only service to average over an hour. The best performing area was the Black Country, with an average wait of only 23 minutes. Not only was Cornwall the worst-performing service, but it also had the longest ambulance handover delays at Accident and Emergency. We have previously reported in some depth about ‘corridor care’.
To put this into some context, I would like to remind readers that in order to be classified as a ‘Category 1’ (most urgent), you pretty much have to be dead or in cardiac arrest. ‘Category 2’ makes up the bulk of incidents, which includes heart attacks, strokes, sepsis, and major burns. All these conditions require immediate medical attention.
Many of you will have heard of the ‘golden hour’, which is when every second counts in emergency care. Clearly, in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, the golden hour has passed. To clarify, Cornwall has nearly 500,000 residents and one general hospital with 670 beds, 6,700 staff, and a budget of £580 million. With over five million holidaymakers visiting every year, it doesn’t take a mathematician to realise that demand outweighs supply. Where infrastructure is already failing and not fit for purpose, you can understand why some communities get upset when millions of others living outside of the area put extra demands on it. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned in how mass ‘movement’, no matter who it is, causes chaos, disruption, and distress.
How to boost your income and pay your childcare bill: take part in a clinical trial
I say that with tongue in cheek, of course. There are people who are regularly participating in clinical trials to supplement their income. In 2020-2021, 1.4 million people across England registered for them. Figures published by the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry (APBI) showed that over 900,000 were enrolled in Covid studies. Clinical trials are, by definition, experiments. Do the public have such short memories that they have forgotten the Northwick Park incident, when six young men who participated in a clinical trial became very seriously ill? Did the Duff Report mean nothing? It isn’t just the financial rewards that draw people to enrol. Free food, free accommodation, days of watching TV, and being looked after attracts many, together with a sense of gratification that they have been involved in potentially lifesaving medical treatments for others.
In the UK, FluCamp appears to be one of the most popular choices. Participants are paid up to £4,400 to be given a small dose of a so-called ‘virus strain’ and then quarantined in London for 11-14 days. 60% of clinical trials are funded by pharmaceutical companies, with the other 40% funded by academia. But what price is your life worth?
World Health Organisation calls a secret and urgent mpox meeting
Thanks to James Roguski for his valuable, in-depth reports on the happenings at the World Health Organisation(WHO). Will mpox be declared another Public Health Emergency at a secret meeting scheduled for 14 August, 2024? The meeting will be a closed meeting, but why the secrecy?
The cause of all the panic is a new ‘viral strain’ which emerged in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in September, 2023, which they said has now spread outside the DRC.
An invitation has been extended to ‘manufacturers of vaccines for prevention against mpox’ to submit their expression of interest for emergency use listing (EUL). Granting an EUL will accelerate vaccine access, and it will enable GAVI and the European Union to procure vaccines for distribution.
And Finally …
Thank you to everyone who emails me or otherwise gets in touch. I do read all your emails even if I cannot respond personally to everyone. UK Column is only a little team. Each presenter gets approximately 18 minutes every week to report on stories that we think you will be interested in, and many of them you won’t hear anywhere else.
We could easily fill a 24-hour/365-day programme, but none of us would get any sleep or see our families. As it is, most of us sacrifice our free time to research. It is as equally as frustrating to us as it is to you if the story you are particularly invested in isn’t covered. Sadly, we can’t please all the people all the time. One of the reasons I write a blog twice a month is to cover some of what we can’t fit in the news. But even that doesn’t cover all that is going on.
That said, I even surprise myself when I pop across to the website to check what UK Column has reported on before, or to remind myself what I have covered in my articles and blogs. I never cease to be amazed, as we really have covered a huge amount. I now use the UK Column web site as a reference library. It is worth its weight in gold.
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I chuckled aloud at a comment in the chat box when I popped into the UK Column studio last Friday. A member askedwhether we were sponsored by SAGA! Even though some of us are greater in years, we hope we are also wiser from life experiences. I may look old, and my body doesn’t function quite so well; however, my brain is sharper than it was in my younger days.
The world is upside down and inside out. Nothing makes sense any more. Dangerous means safe and truth means lie. Up is down, right is left, boys can be girls, and girls can be boys. Who wrote the song Mad World?
Autumn and winter will soon be upon us. Have you got a plan in case of emergencies? Could you feed your family for a week minimum if power goes down and food distribution networks are interrupted? It isn’t too late to squirrel some provisions away. Don’t forget camping lights. Isn’t it always the way that electricity goes down during a winter of short daylight hours?
Until next time
God Bless
Debi
1 Thessalonians 5:3 KJV
For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
