Thoughts of a carer

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...

  There are some things about the healthcare industry in the UK that are Soviet in style; that may seem a strange suggestion, but the bureaucracy of the NHS bears more than a passing resemblance to that created by Lenin, Stalin and co up to the 1960s.. You can’t have what you want, be told something personal to you, or buy what you know you need, directly; you must go and see an often very well remunerated official to get a bit of paper to allow you to then buy whatever you know you want or need, or to find out something that is very specific to you, which in some ways might be no-one else’s damn business.  We hear every day that the NHS is collapsing, even that we must shut ourselves away ‘to protect the NHS’.  Hospitals can’t admit any patients, and doctors can’t see anyone unless they first speak to them on the phone (that itself being an example of what I’m getting at); actually, it's all very 1970s Russia. If we needed a prescription from the GP to buy a loaf of brea...

  I was watching Talking Pictures TV on Sunday (8th May); around 4.45pm they showed a short film, made, I think, in 1960, about schools for the deaf. It was an interesting film, made in a bygone era, but one which might still have some relevance today.  *** My stepmother, Margaret, was a working State Registered Nurse when that film was made. She had done her training soon after leaving school in the late forties, and, after a year or two as a nursery nurse at an industrial laundry, she worked in hospitals in central London until the late seventies, when she moved to an occupational health role, before retiring at the end of 1991.  Margaret had grown up when things were very different to now; all respectable people attended church. She was an active Sunday School attendee, and continued - on the face of it - to uphold ‘Christian’ values, but did, when the mask slipped, have some attitudes that, at least today, would be considered cruel, or unacceptable. One such was towar...

  Notices can spread Covid, according to the Church Sheinton, Shropshire April 2022 I was out walking between Shrewsbury and Ironbridge last week. It’s pleasant countryside, and a few miles in the fresh air and walking boots are good for the soul. So, also, are village churches, but I was unprepared for what confronted me on the noticeboard outside one in Sheinton, a couple of miles east of Cressage Bridge: It's a shame that the church in Berrington, a few miles away, is to close, but that’s not the message I first got from the notice. The heading, in bold, reads ‘ Please do not touch this Notice (to avoid possible spread of Covid -19) .  The notice was dated 3rd March 2022.  *** We’ve known since early 2021 that Covid isn’t spread through contact - there is an article on this topic in Nature ( https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00251-4 ) dated 29 January 2021. ‘Are the CoE so out of touch they don’t know this’, I wondered, ‘or do they somehow feel it is their dut...