Richard & Judy: Nobody is trying to destroy the NHS
J: SAVE our NHS, save-our NHS! This near-witless chant from a group of protesting – well, who exactly? Junior doctors? Nurses? Hospital cleaners? – has been the TV news soundtrack to coverage of the now-postponed doctors’ strike.
It drives me mad. Save the NHS? From what? From who? The NHS has never been more highly-funded. Yes, it is beset with problems of demand and supply but its existence is not remotely in doubt.
It doesn’t want saving, it wants running properly. That’s the problem with the junior doctor dispute. Because it’s all about grubby old money (nothing wrong with that, by the way, we all need to be paid properly) the British Medical Association has had to build some artificial high ground to preach from.
It’s about patient safety, they say. No. It. Isn’t. And even if it was, how exactly does using patients as hostages improve their safety? Because make no mistake, the only ones to be hurt (and possibly killed) by the doctors’ strikes, if and when they happen (we’ll come to the “if” shortly) are you and me.
Sure, hospital managers may have a few sleepless nights organising emergency cover and skeleton rotas but they’ll still have a nice warm bed to be sleepless in. They’ll still get paid whatever the “convictions” of the strikers may be. And what are those convictions?
At the top level – ie in the hard-Left contingent of the BMA – they seem to be more about crushing the Tories (sorry, make that “Tory scum”) than anything else. Leaked details of the stormy meeting that ended with the narrow majority call for strikes are revealing.
One delegate allegedly said that the BMA “should pick up where the miners left off” and that this was a chance to “break” Theresa May. Lovely.
So patients are the cannon fodder in an ideological artillery barrage on Number 10. Thanks for that, BMA. Glad to be of service. Any time.
This week an opinion poll showed public support for the strikes has fallen sharply since the spring. It’s not surprising. People aren’t stupid, they know when they’re being sold a political pup.
Many doctors are against the strikes and would probably cross picket lines. Personally I think the junior doctors should be paid the extra they’re asking for. They work punishingly long hours and weekend shifts impact family life and leisure time.
They ought to carry a premium. Just don’t try telling us that a row about money is a row about patient safety. If that’s your uppermost concern then don’t go on strike, doc. And I don’t think they will.
This week’s climbdown – the BMA belatedly acknowledged it hadn’t given enough notice of the first of the rolling strikes and cancelled it – revealed unmistakably that the organisation is in disarray.
I suspect that they’re looking for a way out because if the public aren’t with them, and strikers cross picket lines in substantial numbers, then the BMA is in deep trouble.
If Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is a smart man he’ll offer something between a fig leaf and an olive branch to the junior doctors. And then we can get back to the main agenda: reforming our creaking NHS.
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R: SOMEONE was getting a scolding but they weren’t taking it lying down. The increasingly raised voices – women’s voices – reached me where I was sipping my coffee outside a boulangerie in southern France near Nice on Wednesday morning.
I turned towards the little market square where all the fuss was coming from. Yes, there they were. One wearing the hijab and a demi-veil – not quite the full burkha, you could see her upper face – the other a white French woman in black Levis and a T-shirt.
It was the woman in jeans who was doing the scolding and although my French is limited I quickly grasped what the row was about. “Take it off! Take it off! All of it!” she shouted, pointing at the veil and headscarf.
“This is France, not Syria!” The other was angry but dignified. “Non! Why should I? I’m doing nothing wrong. This is a democracy, isn’t it? I can wear what I like! Leave me alone, madame. We are not on the beach!”
“Democracy? You lot don’t know the meaning of democracy!”
And so on. Ugly. Tensions down here since July’s massacre on the Promenade des Anglais are still running high.
So I take my hat off to the gendarme (also a woman) who suddenly materialised and defused the increasingly aggressive situation. I couldn’t hear what she said but the woman in jeans dropped her head, shrugged and walked quickly away.
Victim of France's burka on beach removal speaks out
The Muslim woman stayed talking with the officer for a minute or two longer before leaving, though not before the gendarme had patted her reassuringly on the shoulder.
The burkini ban down here has clearly empowered some to go on the offensive on Muslim women’s dress code. What I saw on Wednesday morning wasn’t pretty but I hope it’s a temporary thing.
A headdress does not a terrorist (or a terrorist sympathiser) make.
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R: I BRACED myself as my watch ticked past the 20 minute mark. Only 26 seconds to go, according to the TV previews.
Less than half a minute before Aidan Turner would appear by candlelight, stripped to the waist in Poldark’s Cornish tin mine. Yup. There he was, right on cue, glistening like a rotisserie chicken on its spit. Abs gleaming. Pecs shining.
Upper arms rippling with power as he bashed and bashed away with his iron hammer.
I turned to my wife and spoke the words I’m sure millions of other husbands were saying. Or at least mouthing: “I can only apologise.”
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R: I BET Boxer, the heroic and hardworking carthorse in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, was a Suffolk Punch.
Suffolk Punches, the utterly beautiful breed that was the backbone of agriculture and the Army for centuries, are dying out. There are only about 300 left and an appeal has been launched to save them.
My grandfather was a Shropshire farmer and used Suffolk Punches long after the Second World War until tractors finally and inevitably took over. I am just old enough to remember the last one, kept on out of sentiment into his old age. He was called Captain.
Like all Punches, Captain was chestnut brown, affectionate, loyal and intelligent. He’d been on the farm for years. He was to all intents and purposes one of the family. He was also besotted with my father.
When dad was growing up on the farm, Captain used to trot around after him like an enormous dog. He would whinny across the fields when he caught sight of him and call for him at sunset from his stable.
One summer’s evening my father was practising on the piano in the farm’s drawing room. Someone had left Captain’s stable door insecure and the horse managed to get out. He followed the tinkling notes of the piano, ambling around the side of the house until he reached the drawing room windows, where he stood beaming in at the boy he adored.
Dad grinned back at him from the piano stool and called out: “Father! Captain’s got out again!” At which point the horse moved forward and effortlessly smashed the French windows in with one nod of his massive head.
Glass sprayed everywhere and a moment later Captain was halfway into the room, neighing with delight at being so unexpectedly close to his god. Captain, bless him, is long gone and it looks like his breed may soon be too.
These were the mighty horses who uncomplainingly towed artillery and munitions on the western front during the Great War, suffering catastrophic losses and injuries from enemy shelling and machine-gun fire.
The Countess of Euston, whose estate in Suffolk was once worked by Suffolk Punches, says the UK will be ashamed of itself if people stood by and did nothing to save the breed.
“If we lost the Suffolk Punch I think it would mean we couldn’t really say we are a nation of animal-lovers. They are the most magnificent and beautiful of the breeds,” she said this week.
There are fewer Suffolk Punches left than there are the incredibly rare Siberian Tiger, or Great Panda. They’re every bit as fabulous as either.
Countess, I support your campaign. Let me know how I can help. Save the Suffolk!
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J: ROD Stewart’s first smash hit Maggie May has just been voted the best rock ballad of the 20th century by a continental radio station.
They said it was the perfect depiction of a sexual woman’s fading charms. Maggie May was released in 1971.
Judging by the song’s lyrics the eponymous bed-hopper would have been in her early 30s, which means she’d be not far south of 80 today.
“Wake up Maggie, I think I’ve got something to say to you… I SAID, WAKE UP MAGGIE, I THINK I’VE GOT SOMETHING TO SAY TO YOU! Gawd, where’s that damned hearing aid…”
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J: GEMMA Arterton is a lucky woman. She’s one of those rare beauties who improve with age.
She looked pretty good eight years ago in Quantum Of Solace as Bond girl Strawberry Fields. Now 30 she wowed the Venice Film Festival this week and stole the show at the premiere of The Young Pope.
To quote from When Harry Met Sally: “I’ll have what she’s having.”