Introduction

I was blogging back in 2018 but caring and other responsibilities took priority. 

I'll start again; my old posts are under https://healthandcaresharpenduk.blogspot.com/

I'm in my early sixties, male, and am a carer for Viv, who is of a similar age.  She has had numerous encounters with the NHS, being epileptic, and having a Vestibular Schwannoma .

You'll hear much about our experiences in due course.


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The chronic Chronicle - a local paper I won't buy again

Over the last few weeks Viv and I have been making our way through the box set of the  Danish TV series Badehotellet (‘Seaside Hotel’). Much of it is set in the 1930s when politics in the country immediately to their south was dominated by Herr Hitler, and Danes found that they sometimes needed to be careful, for the Danish government, eager not to cause damage to their economy, had adopted a somewhat pragmatic approach to things in Germany, and even Danish people could be in trouble for saying or doing something that would displease the Fuhrer or his followers. One scene refers to a homosexual being beaten up, another to a Jew being sent to a concentration camp.  Our current crop of politicians - or at least most of them - would believe it ridiculous, but both Viv and I felt there to be some unpleasant similarities between the way peoples' lives were controlled in 1930s Denmark, and the way they are in the United Kingdom today; both seem to be a couple of steps away from tot...
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Viv and I have a subscription to The Radio Times: we like to know what's on TV. There’s so much rubbish on that we don’t like to miss the one or two good programs, like Secrets of the London Underground or reruns of Ever Decreasing Circles .   But like much of the mainstream media it has got caught up in peddling liberal ideas. The 21-27 May issue landed on our doormat on Tuesday, I flicked through it and as soon as I saw the article on page 9 my blood pressure shot up: ‘ Enough Tudors and Stuarts ’, I read, ‘by Troy Deeney’ . ‘Let's  teach all our children about black history’,  it starts. Troy is a career footballer, I believe. I’ve sent off an email to the Feedback pages of RT: Hi Troy Deeney (RT, 21-27 May)  has missed the point about the study of history in schools. History is taught because it explains the way things are in the UK: our language, our customs, our laws. It is not about us as individuals. The Tudor and Stuart period tells us, among othe...
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