“Courage is not having the strength to go on;
it is going on when you don’t have the strength.“
The Monday Morning Quote #666
The People’s Covid Inquiry – opening quote
Michael Mansfield QC doesn’t pull his punches….
The government ignored the pandemic to begin with, ignored the recommendations from Exercise Cygnus, repeatedly ignored the science, had decimated public services, then ignored the cries of those working in the NHS, in social care, and in other crucial services, and as we have heard, ignored the offers of procurement from those working inside the NHS for PPE.
The Government was reluctant to put us into lockdown, because it was feared that the British public would have lockdown fatigue. By the time this eventually happened on 23rd March 2020, it was too late for many people.
THE IMPORTANCE of PUBLIC SERVICES We are supposed to have a framework of public services which are in place for a purpose. In times of emergency, it makes sense to allow those existing public assets, in which the staff are the best placed to know what to do to help and support citizens, to be supported to carry out that unprecedented additional work. Instead, the government has chosen at every stage to prefer private contracts.
POLITICAL CHOICE: TO LOOK TO THE PRIVATE SECTOR: NHS capacity, public health, procurement, education Private test and trace, at a staggering cost of £37 billion, has never worked. GP surgeries all over the country would have been best placed to know their patients, their demographics, their health issues, manage language barriers, and rely on established relationships and trust with them. Doctors were not trusted to look after their own patients.
Private hospitals, the capacity for which was bought up for months at the beginning of the firstlockdown, at most only treated between one and 67 Covid patients per day, at a staggering cost which hasn’t been disclosed.
Private contracts for ventilators, when it is clearly better for those who already make ventilators to be asked to create more of them. Just because you manufacture cars doesn’t mean you can be paid to build helicopters overnight.
Private tutors, to help children in education to catch up from the disruption caused by Covid; rather than the teachers who already know the children they teach, now more intimately than before Covid, having seen into their own homes in Zoom classes.
etc
The Monday Morning Quote #665
“In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood with no clear way out.”
Dante Alighieri
The opening of Dante’s Inferno.
Low Morale in the Dental Profession – Nothing new there.
I came across the book “Medicine and Society” recently. Its author, Henry Miller, was Dean of Medicine and later Vice-Chancellor of the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and this book was published in 1973, the year I started as an Undergraduate.
Writing in the preface Miller concisely states that “This book is concerned with the impact of the revolution in biomedical science on society and on current medical practice.” It would be of interest to anyone who wonders how we have reached this point in medicine and if the changes that Miller predicted have come about – and whether they have been for the better.
It is his view of dentistry, of course, that I looked at first and it’s a shame that nobody took any notice of what he had to say, we might not be in the pickle we find ourselves in now. Judge for yourself from these snippets:
- The facts about British dental health certainly qualify it as another neglected area of the health service. Our dentists extract 10 million decayed teeth and carry out thirty million fillings.
- There can be no doubt that fluoridation of the water supply is the simplest and most effective prophylactic measure.
- The (national health) practitioners are grossly overworked and the system encourages fast work and the use of the cheapest materials available.
- The fee for full dentures under the NHS is £16.50 – the fee in Germany under the Social Health Insurance service is £120. The German technician receives more that twice as much as the total fee of the British dentist and technician combined, for the same service.
- One of the most alarming features of this situation is the low morale of the profession….the financial basis of remuneration might have been specifically designed to produce a cheap and nasty service…
- …it also ensures that since dentistry is arduous and physically as well as mentally exhausting, this is the only profession where for the majority of practitioners earnings decline progressively after middle-age.
“Hanging on in quiet desperation, it’s the English way”
Pink Floyd
Yet it need not be this way….
The Monday Morning Quote #664
Sing-a-long-a-Moray
From New York Times via Charles Arthur’s Overspill.
An interesting enough story from the research labs which, the reporter Sabrina Imbler wrote “When an Eel Climbs a Ramp to Eat Squid From a Clamp, That’s a Moray” as the “dek” (aka subheading) but the section editor Michael Roston determined it should be the headline. But it didn’t stop there. On a roll they went for broke with four verses.
When an Eel Climbs a Ramp. To Eat Squid From a Clamp. That’s a Moray
When an eel wants a squid that’s on land. God forbid! That’s a Moray.
If the squid is too flat. There’s no problem with that. That’s a Moray.
If the squid is so big. It still eats like a pig. That’s a Moray.
It deserves some sort of prize, standing alongside “Super Caley go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious” in the all-time pantheon of headlines you can sing.
The couplet that caught my eye was “training an eel, is like training a seal”
The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed
The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Set in the city where I grew up and in a time not too long before I was born, this novel describes the events around the unlawful killing of two people. Both are immigrants who live in the area around Cardiff Docks that was known as Tiger Bay. The descriptions of the background to their lives and the lives of others in the area opened my eyes to somewhere that I thought I knew well enough.
It’s a tragic, true tale where nobody wins and the events deeply affect the families of those closely involved.
Bute Street and the Docks was an area with a reputation and where my parents would have been frightened for my safety if they had known that I ventured there after dark, two decades after this time. Populated by people who were often strangers in a strange land, a mix of races, creeds and cultures all trying to make a living in what had once been the busiest port on earth but was now on its way down economically as trading in coal tailed off.
Nadifa’s writing is excellent throughout, evoking the poverty of the times, the feeling of alienation of much of the population and the prejudice shown to them. I was gripped from start to finish.
View all my reviews
The Monday Morning Quote #663
On Midsummer’s Day, some words from A Midsummer Night’s Dream – enjoy.
“The course of true love never did run smooth.”
“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
“My soul is in the sky.”
“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.”
The Monday Morning Quote #662
The Monday Morning Quote #661
Up to a point a person’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and changes in the world about them. Then there comes a time when it lies within their grasp to shape the clay of their life into the sort of thing they wish it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their times, lack of good fortune or the quirks of fate. Everyone has the power to say, “This I am today. That I shall be tomorrow.”
The Incisal Edge 