Update 30 (really?)
The Walrus ‘Thor’ has migrated further North from his appearance in Scarborough. He’s now landed in Blyth on the Northumberland coast, where I spent most of my teenage years. When I lived there, the town had five pits and an active shipyard. Almost all my schoolmates’ fathers were miners or shipyard workers. My two best friends left school before me, one as an apprentice carpenter in the shipyard, the other as an apprentice electrician at Crofton Mill pit which I cycled past every morning on my way to Blyth Grammar School.
Gordon’s job included sawing up sheets of asbestos with which he lined the cabins of the ships he was helping to build. Fifty years later the accumulated dust in his lungs took its revenge and killed him. By the 1980s the pits and the shipyard had all gone and with them most of the town centre - its heart having been ripped out by one of those shopping mall redevelopments masterminded by Councillor T Dan Smith and the corrupt architect John Poulson - you might recall some of that story from the tv series ‘Our Friends in the North’ - starring among others the very young Daniel Craig. My other friend Charlie introduced me to the way electricity and later electronics worked, and that led me to apply for a BBC training course - the rest as they say ……
More recently Blyth has won substantial press coverage from the creation of a wind turbine factory, a huge wind farm off its coastline and now the possibility of a giant battery manufacturing plant. I loved my time in Blyth and am delighted that a better economic livelihood may be returning for its citizens. In the 2019 general election, out of frustration with the lack of North East investment, Blyth Valley voted Conservative for the first time ever - considering how badly the Party has since run the country, I suspect the good people of the town won’t be making that mistake again.
On Monday I spoke to Palliative Michelle who is on the mend after a couple of weeks with this nasty flu thing that’s going around. We’ve agreed to drop my steroid dose to 2.5mg from Tuesday, but I suspect that after what happened last time, we won’t go any lower. Sarah, who saw me to talk about my swallowing challenge emailed me and happily I was able to report no deterioration.
Sadly that’s not the case for our nhs which seems to me to be beyond repair. I’ve written about it before, and emphasised that its difficulties are far more complex than simple underfunding. The problem is serious mismanagement and almost certainly too much over-management. Vast salaries paid to layer after layer of individuals who rarely take any responsibility for their errors - investigations that promise “lessons have been learned” when in fact they haven’t, so that the same mistakes are oft repeated. To top all that is the failure of our political leadership as headlined on this week’s Daily Mirror front page.
The performance of nhs trusts varies widely across the country. Nationwide for instance, 44% of English ambulances are waiting more than 30 minutes to discharge their patients into the care of a hospital, but here in Gloucestershire, 80% of ambulance wait more than half an hour before handing them over.
Across England, the average A&E waiting times exceed the target of 4 hours in 35% of cases, whilst in Gloucestershire, that figure is at 41%. If we look at waiting times for treatment then Gloucestershire does slightly better meeting the National average of 18 weeks. We’re at 29% as opposed to the England average of 41%.
The last 13 years of Conservative led government have set the bar so low that it is now
impossible for anyone else to do any worse. Labour will inherit a dreadful economic situation but at least they will be able to be honest about it. They won’t be corrupt, they won’t embrace Johnson’s cronyism or be quite as blatantly stupid as Liz Truss. There is so much to be optimistic about compared with the appalling Tory record of buying honours or misplacing PPE contracts - my fingers are crossed that they can rise to the challenge.
My initial diagnosis of a few weeks or a couple of months has been so substantially surpassed that I requested a consultation with the Neurologist who first saw me. Happily he’d a cancellation and can see me at 1140 on Monday morning - sometimes things do work in your favour.
On Wednesday I awoke with the first signs of a chest cold, serious coughing controlled only by Jakeman’s throat and chest menthol sweets. Hopefullly this will only be for a few days as opposed to the three week version some friends have been experiencing. In ten days time we’re hoping to go back to the rental property in Bampton for a change of scenery as well as some oenological and gastronomic adventuring. It’s Saturday morning and I’m still coughing.
The Australian party have been joined by grandson George’s girlfriend Charlotte for their final ten days. When they get back, grandson Jim has two further weeks with his present employer before moving to North Wales to learn more at the feet of Michelin starred chef Bryan Webb. We are so thrilled for him to have been offered a job with someone whose cooking we really admire and whose skills have been acknowledged by some of the most respected judges in Europe.
