Monthly Archives: May 2022

LOSING THE TASTE FOR FREEDOM

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There can be no doubt that the present financial crisis we are all facing which, will inevitably harm the poorest most of all, as it always does, will almost certainly eclipse that of 2008. There can be no doubt, that this has been caused directly by the Westminster Government’s profligate and reckless folly in their response to Covid-19, together with the rolling over to environmental pressure groups and virtual signalling on climate change with the sustained push towards green energy at the expense of oil and gas. The fuel increases are most likely caused by investors being frightened away from fossil fuels, crippling future developments and inevitable allowing prices to spiral out of control. A lot of people cheer and say that must be a good thing if we can save the planet. If you take that kind of moral stance, you need to accept the inevitable acceleration of worldwide poverty, which has been in decline now for quite a long time, and the famine and deaths that will surely follow. This, unlike climate catastrophe itself, is an existential risk. You have to accept that in order to make an omelette you need to break eggs. You need, as a government, to make that assessment, make a judgement on the decisions you take, basically have a think before you act to decide whether it will result in a worse situation than the one you are trying to alleviate. Something that the UK government did not do when faced with Covid-19

The facts we now know about the eye watering sums of public money that were squandered with hardly any accounting, during the crisis, are beyond scary. You don’t need to be an economist to understand that. According to the National Audit Office, £370billion was spent by the government on Covid issues by September 2021: £154B on business support, £84B on health and social care, £67B on emergency response and other public services, £60B made directly to individuals – self-employed schemes and the like and £5B elsewhere, wherever elsewhere is. It is hard to grasp what £370billion looks like to us plain folks, but it was suggested1 that that sum could provide every family in the UK three full meals a day for 3 years, abolish income tax totally for 20 months, or fund the armed forces for 8 years. So, a lot of money.

I wrote to my Westminster MP asking what action he or his party took to oppose this irresponsible profligatory and the potential destruction of our economy. Why did they fail to hold the government to account? This, of course, is the principal reason for him being there in the first place. I think I know the answer. It will be the like the one I got from my MSP, simply ignoring the question but telling me how good the Scottish Government was in spending money on lots of really nice things. I like all the nice things like free prescription, free bus travel, child payments increased benefits and free tuition, but now and then I wonder where the money is coming from and who is paying. Now we know, it will be our children and the poor, which is a nice legacy to leave.

Her majesty’s opposition in parliament, throughout this crisis, has been hopelessly ineffective and worse than useless. Their unwillingness to even challenge the basic assumptions of lock-downs and all the other cruel measures is staggering but that aside you would have thought they would confront the cavalier expenditure of massive sums of public money. That is surely what they are supposed to do. Money is usually what they care about, but no, “just spend more” was there mantra. The main stream media were similarly ineffective and pathetically supine on this. But now the chickens have come home to roost.

So, like parties and cakes, appalling indiscretions, hypocrisies and deceit it looks like they will get away with it. Because there is no serious voice up for a challenge.  After all, there is a war on “don’t you know?” It is unlikely that the much-published public enquiry will actually expose the root cause of the disaster. But the public might. We might just realise that we have been had, were taken for complete fools, strung along with words of false authority and corrupted science, frightened into acting like lemmings. It could be hard but we might just realise that they have abused our trust, overcome our inbuilt trust and respect for authority. We might think to ask questions, we might challenge our acceptance of the given narrative and glimpse something of the reality of what has been done in our name. Things would then change, but I am not holding my breath. Everything points to us taking the line of least resistance, avoiding conflict and going along with whatever the authorities dictate, for the sake of peace and a comfortable life. After all we may say “it is no big deal” Well this time it is a big deal.

Back in 1976 on a programme broadcast by the BBC, Alexandra Solzhenitsyn spoke about the riddle and contradictions in human nature.

“One of these riddles is: how is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find the strength to rise up and free themselves, first in spirit and then in body; while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly lose the taste for freedom, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery”2

  1. Ewan Stewart (economist)
  2. Alexandra Solzhenitsyn “warning to the west”

FUSOBACTERIUM NUCLEATUM

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It happened very quickly. I had procrastinated for far too long. It might be a generational thing, it might be a male thing or it just might be me. I have an innate hesitancy not to bother folk and not to waste the doctor’s time and, of course, there is always the hope that it might just go away. It was a dull abdomen pain and excessive tiredness and finally an excruciating and persistent pain in the right shoulder, that painkillers would not shift. This was not going to go away and when I got round to doing something about it, there were so many hoops to jump through before I got a face-to-face appointment with my GP. By this time more than a week had gone by, since realising something was wrong. But then things started to move. The doctor listened carefully to my story, carried out an examination and asked some pertinent questions. He short-cutted the process of taking blood samples, arranged for an earlier pick-up to the lab and said he would call back in the afternoon. True to his word the call came through.

“I am sorry, the levels are high, there is too much going on, you have to go to hospital”

“When?”

“Now, they are waiting for you”.

So, my wife, my companion, the love of my life, helped me gather some things and drove me to the hospital. It was not far away. With a mixture of apprehension and relief, relief that I hadn’t just imagined it after all, I entered this strange and magical world as a patient for the first time since leaving a maternity ward 70plus years ago.  I recognised it, of course, I had visited hospitals before many times. In another sense it was not strange. Videos of hospital interiors, operating theatres and treatment rooms are in your face all the time and the backdrop to so many news programmes. It would be hard to miss. My wife also has a fondness for medical dramas and I have seen things out of the corner of my eye. They are really not my cup of tea, partly because of a squeamish stomach, when it comes to blood and guts, but more to do with the dramas themselves. The characters so often seem to be of the worst kind, arrogant, rude, boorish, prima-donnas, basically not nice people and the script writers seem to have a penchant to insert not-so-subtle sermons, so you are always aware that you are being preached at.

But here I was the centre of my own little drama and seeing it all from quite another perspective. It was like entering a city, built on several levels with corridors and stairs and lifts and people going up and down and along with trolleys and push chairs, nurses and doctors, students and registrars, cleaners and cooks, consultants and porters, all moving continuously in an unhurried but purposeful pace. I was awestruck observing the astonishing organisation that worked in its various parts together, the intertwining of disciplines and task, the order and efficiency. Over my two plus weeks stay, I can’t count how many individuals cared directly for me, but I guess it must have been close to 40. What struck me more than anything, was not simply the astonishing technology, the skill, the expertise and the years of knowledge and training, the legacy of medical advancement and the understanding of how the body works, how to intervene and how to direct treatment towards recovery. It was not simply these amazing things, but the care, the genuine care, that I experience at every level. It went way beyond. It wasn’t just a job, but a beautiful expression of true humanity. It makes me cry when I think about it. And I know it can only come from God, who made us in his image.   

The medics wasted no time: a session in radiology under the space age cat-scan machine, quickly identifying an abscess in the liver and then without any delay a return to radiology, this time to have a drain inserted. The consultant talked me through the procedure. I didn’t have to watch the cut or the insertion, it was all on the ultra sound screen, that moving wedge with the grainy image. In my case, not a baby, but an ugly liver and an evil dark mass up in the top corner taking up almost one third of the organ. The small discomfort and the mild pain were eclipsed by the wonder of what I was seeing. Suddenly out of the top right-hand corner, like a comet, the needle fired its way into the centre of the dark mass It was followed by a tube and the process of draining of all this vile substance began. 

Safely back in the ward and following a visit, I settled myself down and waited for a promised move to a quieter ward. Then, without warning, it happened, an uncontrollable violent shaking, my whole being was rattling. It was sepsis and without saying anything or making a call, the ward nurse was on it right away. Suddenly, screens were drawn round and the whole team, doctors, nurses and health care assistants, piled in. I think I have seen this sort of thing on TV. They were pricking fingers on both hands, drawing blood, injecting adrenalin, stuffing sugar down my throat, supplying oxygen and all the while speaking numbers over numbers and repeating “it’s still rising”. It was a strange out-of-body experience. I was just watching and remember thinking, at the time, without any sense of drama “This is it then”. The day before when I was possibly at my lowest, in the long night, weary and unable to get relief from pain, I was praying and simply asking God to take me. I was ready. “Take me home” was my prayer. But after those magnificent medics had done their work and my body had settled down, I understood the answer was “No not this time”.

Some days later the consultant was able to tell me that liver abscesses are pretty rare, that the bacteria the lab had identified was also very rare yet they couldn’t say how it came about. But from there onwards, it was a slow but steady regaining of functions and taking back control of the body systems and step by step I was feeling so much better.

It is hard to describe the overwhelming sense of gratitude that flooded right through me: gratitude for the amazing care I had been shown at all levels, gratitude to the many folk who, I know, who had me on their minds, were praying and thinking of me and sending messages and gratitude ultimately to God, as I witnessed first hand the absolute wonder of his care, of his love and the awesome power of his healing.