Update 9

Sunday morning July 7th and I’ve just experienced my first difficulty with the brain. I tried to form the word bucket but it wouldn’t come. Bizarrely we were talking about the eponymous list which I don’t have. The famous neurosurgeon Henry Marsh who’s also been diagnosed with terminal Cancer finds the concept unacceptable, defining it as “consumerist, hedonistic and selfish”. I count myself lucky to have pretty much had a complete life and it’s only its final stages that now trouble me. Although it will be too late to help my cause, I really hope Parliament will soon allow assisted dying - it is insane that we are still treating our animals more humanely than our fellow humans.

On Monday I rang the surgery concerned that I was struggling to breathe with a heart rate approaching 100 bpm. I was seen immediately by the excellent Dr Macrow and sent to Gloucester hospital’s GP Asessment Unit. I believe this is a new idea which keeps patients who’ve effectively been triaged by their GP from taking slots in A&E. They took bloods, gave me an ecg and an x-ray and sent me home with the promise of a CT scan the next day - three and a half hours, start to finish.

The scan was set for 1530 on Tuesday and by 1730  the cause of my breathlessness had been diagnosed as a Pulmonary Embolism (a clot on my lung) - as if the tumour wasn’t bad enough. I now have to give myself a daily injection of Fragmin for three months to counter the problem. My first thought is whether I’ll still be here to complete the course?

Reading Justin Welby’s recent ditherings about homosexuality reveal just how sad are his attempts at fence sitting. For an obviously intelligent and thoughtful man to pretend that two entirely opposing positions can both be acceptable within Christianity, is plainly dishonest. I have no time for any religion, but I have some time for Jesus the man I read about as a child, and as far as I’m aware he never revealed any anti gay views, indeed I recall him advocating quite a lot of love for his fellow mankind whatever their calling.

Here’s a photographic reminder of the big lie that started our Brexit catastrophe. In case you didn’t brother to check, in the full year that included the referendum vote, the actual amount we “send the EU” was £189 million a week, far less than the value of all the benefits we were then receiving. Remember when those Kent queues were virtually unknown and our free flowing exports to the EU were still earning us record breaking millions? 

Here’s another reminder, for anyone still under the widely held misapprehension that freedom of movement meant that any EU citizen could stay in the UK as long as they wanted. Under the freedom of movement rules (Article 7 Directive 2004/38/EC), EU citizens from outside the UK could only stay here for more than 3 months if they were financially self sufficient or in full time education. We don’t need to ask why the Brexiteers failed to highlight that.

The extent of profiteering during the initial panic to secure PPE supplies has yet to really hit the public consciousness, but PRIVATE EYE  has published an analysis that is eye watering in its scale. Just take a moment to note the dramatic changes in these companies’ fortunes since they won their government contracts - and how those were won is of course yet another story still worthy of further investigation

The candidates for Conservative leader came to Cheltenham last night (Thursday) as at least one local member confirmed to the press that they expect at the next election to lose this seat by 5,000 votes, whoever wins. That’s the sort of quote that does my heart good. The last twelve years have been miserable as far as UK governance has been concerned. Austerity was bad enough, but to have it replaced by utter incompetence subverted by total dishonesty has sucked the country dry. The Tory party has reinvented itself as a moral vacuum with many of its leaders consumed with nothing other than the blatant self interest that so motivates Johnson himself. I believe for instance, that Priti Patel’s Home Office heart contains nothing other than a total disdain for her fellow beings.

I do however have a lot of time for the former Conservative MP Matthew Parris whose columns for the Times are always worth reading. He ends today’s (Saturday ) with this prophesy: “Under Boris Johnson we’ve been circling the plug hole for a long time, under Liz Truss we may get to see what the drains look like.” 

And finally, I’m delighted that JJ, our third grandson has just been awarded a first class honours degree in International Politics with History. I can’t help wondering whether listening to my rants through his first eighteen years, may have contributed just a little to his choice of degree ….