Gents we are in National emergency, people are dying and you want still want to go over old ground. Please give it rest and concentrate on your families. Lefty how is your father I was reading you spent a bit of time with him in A&E recently.
He’s still in James Cook. He was in ward 3, which is the ward put aside for Coronavirus victims, but once the test came back negative on that they moved him to a different ward. When I was in ward 3 on Monday night the staff were all suited and masked and scrubbing furiously. The smell of detergent was overpowering. I reckon there were about half a dozen patients in there (perhaps waiting on results rather than with the virus) and maybe 16 spare beds. The ward was quiet but you got a sense from the staff that this was the calm before the storm and they were just preparing as best they could.
My dad has an underlying respiratory condition, as well as a few other issues, but caught a chest infection on top. He was then sent home when he shouldn’t have been, due to overwhelming pressure on A&E staff and lack of beds, and given inadequate medication. He’s now got a water infection and possibly pneumonia to boot and yet they asked me to take his calliper down tonight so they can see if they can send him home to be looked after by his 82 year old wife who has a heart condition. Found out today that he hasn’t had a dump in 11 days too, so there is soon to be a tidal wave of sh1t to deal with. Even so, he is slightly on the mend. Thanks for asking.
But to your point about going over old ground, with respect, I don’t see it that way. The political decisions have put us where we are now. Over the last 10 years I’ve probably visited A&E on average every 6-8 weeks and around a fifth of the time had an elderly relative in hospital. Before that I had good few experiences with my young son. So I know first hand how things improved from 2002 to 2010 and how shocking the decline has been between 2010 and 2020. So it’s important to fight the ideology that has led to this. I can point to similar declines in the Police service and schools.
It’s not right to say the Brexit issue is old ground. It is far from over. We are still stuck with sorting the details out for years and for me there are direct consequences for my son about to go to university, with its potential loss in funding, debt, restriction on opportunities to study in Europe, loss of rights he was born with yet had no say in their removal, the impact on research and science Brexit has to have, the loss of some world class lecturers and professors and the reputation of the U.K. in the world. There are also likely to be consequences for clients of mine. So any mitigation on the impact, via a softer Brexit, remaining part of as many Eu schemes as possible, is crucial.
I note that the Conservative Party, while notoriously opaque on its funding, is bit by bit being exposed. It pretends that it gets a lot of money from grass roots small donors. We now know it works on a 90/10 ratio, 90% of its funding comes from 10% of its donors. Around 40% of that is from a few hedge funds. A lot of the rest is Russian. The same sources bankrolled Brexit. It’s not coincidence.
People such as Cooper talk about the principle of democracy is more important than anything, hence honouring the referendum result. The principle of not rewarding liars, allowing those to get away with flouting rules, accountability, without consequence is more important in defending democracy.
However my biggest objection to the idea that this is old ground is not the choice of brexit in itself, but the thinking PROCESS behind the way people arrived at their decision. That is always relevant. It is important that people understand that their process was flawed, how it was flawed and most importantly why they were unable to realise they were employing bad reasoning.
