Category: Fundraising

Life & Death – Coronavirus week 8 – assessing risks, dividing the country

Tell us what we are supposed to be doing, don’t ask us to use common sense….

Looking back with the benefit of ‘2020 hindsight’ the week started with what Boris might have called ‘an inverted pyramid of confusion’ with lots of unanswered questions following his Sunday evening address to the nation.  The well-trailed/leaked message of ‘we’re coming out of lockdown’, the ‘meat of the story at the top’ was followed by the fragmented uncertainty of what was actually said, and the shrinking detail of how that would work – the narrowing at the bottom of the pyramid.

‘Stay at Home’ was replaced with ‘Stay Alert’ and we were told that ‘coming down the mountain is sometimes harder than going up’. He announced a government plan to ‘ease the lockdown’ in the next few months. Some of the measures had been widely trailed in the media in a way that I don’t fully understand. All journalists have their ‘sources’ and back-door channels into government departments. Indeed it seems that some cabinet ministers are happy to ‘leak’ when it suits them, or perhaps to gain an advantage in the game of getting more power by a higher profile. The problem was that some people were waiting to hear that they could see more family members, start planning a late summer holiday or going for a beer at a pub that has an outside garden or space.

What we heard instead was ‘go back to work tomorrow’, ‘from Wednesday we can go out more, sunbathe or play sports’, ‘schools and some shops will be opening at the start of June’, ‘hospitality being open from 4th July’.  The new alert system was underpinned by scientific advice and monitoring of the now infamous ‘R-number’. Monday morning brought more confusion when ministers didn’t appear to have details on some of the ‘rules’ and how they would be applied. Could we meet mum and dad in the park or was it only mum (presumably while dad sat in the car and waited his turn next). The situation was not surprising as the more detailed 60-page official document was not published until later on Monday and news programmes were full of traffic jams and crowded tube trains as the ‘rush back to work’ started.

By this weekend crowds were taking advantage of the warm weather to travel long distances to beauty spots in the countryside and on the coast. Some interviewed for the evening news expressed surprise at the number of people there and the lack of social distancing. 

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago the need for careful planning of how workplaces could open with ‘social distancing’ and ‘re-engineering’ of processes. Any business or workplace that had wasted the last seven weeks of the lockdown and wasn’t planning how the changes could happen prior to the announcement, can’t complain if they fail in the future. Talking to Steve, an accountant friend of mine, about how his small business customers were coping, he said there were two groups; those who had panicked and taken short term decisions, and those who had changed. He mentioned restaurant businesses who had turned into takeaway services and were now making more money as they didn’t realise just how much customers liked their dishes. We agreed that the ‘good’ well-run businesses who treat their teams well will come out of this stronger.

Trade Union Leaders were calling for their involvement in helping businesses get back working in a safe way. They have many trained ‘Health & Safety Reps’ that can help companies and reassure their members that safe-working practices are in place. Although the TUC had been on a conference call with the Prime Minister on Sunday evening, no mention of help from the unions was made by ministers in the daily round of the breakfast news media organisations. The phrase ‘it is just common sense’ was often used. The government did produce some detailed guidance on workplace changes, staff shifts, social distancing and deep cleaning measures for eight areas of work from manufacturing, offices, restaurants etc. But I repeat, most businesses should have been thinking about these things before this week.

Wednesday was the day we could all begin to get out more and play sport, but we decided to stay home and see if the beauty spots, parks and garden centres became crowded with people, as had been the concern when it was announced. It was a mixed picture and the mood was captured by a cartoon in one of the newspapers of a golfer playing a round on his own whilst his wife took a towel to sunbathe in the bunker. On seeing the queue of 30 or more customers to get into a garden centre we decided that we weren’t that desperate to get some more plants for our garden.

Parents, teachers, and their unions were raising concerns about how social distancing would be in place for reception, year one and year six classes, the first designated to go back. For some it was literally a matter of ‘life and death’ with some parents accusing ministers of treating them and their children as ‘guinea pigs’ for an experiment and saying that they definitely wouldn’t be sending their children back until schools were ‘100% safe’. Of course there is no such thing as 100% safe statistics were quoted on the risk of being injured in a car journey or playing in a park. There is also a risk of harm if younger children see parents in a state of terror about letting them out for the ‘virus to get them’. We watched an interview with a head teacher from the UK and a teacher in a primary school in Denmark that had been open for a few weeks and put in place measures to help. They put the children in small groups of 4-5 and played a game whereby they had to keep away from the other groups in the school. Washing hands at the start and end of the morning and afternoon became a physical education (PE) class where children lined up two metres apart and did various exercises such as squats, jumps, stretches as they moved closer to the sinks and after washing their hands they went back to the classroom to do a paper exercise. The UK head teacher appeared to take an interest and be willing to learn some lessons from this. The Danish teacher stated that when they opened less than half the parents sent children but after two weeks it was over 90%.

Of course we shouldn’t forget that teachers and schools have been open during the lockdown, doing frontline work and teaching smaller numbers of key worker’s children. They will have learnt something from this experience. Some of the larger ‘Academy School Groups’ that have estates departments have been planning for opening and doing individual risk assessments for their varied buildings. Some head teachers in primary schools are not trained in risk assessments. This is not a criticism, it’s just not their job which became clear when they panicked about how to keep 4-year olds apart, and not to be terrified of teachers wearing masks and full PPE! They may be great teachers, but they also need help from local authorities and others. We have to hope that the large academy groups only motivation is education of their pupils but, as with some of the larger businesses in the commercial sector, it is possible that their Chief Executives are more concerned with lost profit than with the safety of their employees.

Speaking to Chris, a friend who has a daughter that teaches primary school children in a relatively deprived areas locally, I asked his view. He said he could understand the unions asking for guarantees on safety as that is their role. His daughter has identified vulnerable pupils who should be in already but haven’t been coming. Some of her children are not capable of being controlled in the way people would expect and their hygiene habits are poor as the result of the environment they live in. She is not worried about catching the virus as she is young, but Chris is concerned about her, as there is still much we don’t know about how the virus affects children.

The Danish comparison was being used as a ‘positive example of what could be done’ by the same ministers who said it was wrong to compare the way we handled the crisis, compared to other countries who appeared to be doing better. Is it that Danish schools and parents have a different relationship than ours?

As I write teacher unions and leaders have met with government scientific advisors, and doctors have backed the proposed way forward for a controlled opening in June. Anne Longfield the children’s commissioner for England has demanded that the two sides stop squabbling and get on with reopening ‘in the interests of children’, the many disadvantaged of whom had been away from education for too long.

The schools issue was just one area this week that shone a light on the growing division/diversion of the way the crisis is being dealt with both between the countries of the UK and within the regions of England. I wrote last week that Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland were sticking with the ‘Stay at home’ message. This week the elected mayors in Manchester & Liverpool went on record about the support they and their councils were being given from London. The Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham wrote two newspaper articles bemoaning the short notice they were given of the proposed ‘back to work’ message and not having the financial package given to the London Mayor to provide the extra public transport to maintain social distancing. The allowances given to local authorities to deal with the crisis had gone from ‘spend what you need, and we will reimburse you, to ‘we need to be sharing the cost’. It needs to be stated that he was a former Labour MP for Leigh, one of the constituencies that changed to Conservative in the December election. So the following statement needs to be read in that context.

For a government elected on votes in the north, and promises to “level-up”, it is surprising how quickly it has reverted to the default, London-centric mode in this crisis. Last Sunday’s package certainly felt more suited to the south than to the north.

His article refers to another issue I heard on Friday that seems to mark a change in approach. Many homeless people have been taken off the streets and put into hotels with a grant from central government. That funding is being withdrawn and put back onto the local authorities, many of whom have also had a large cut in the funding to give local support during the emergency. It seems that the poorest areas are having the largest cuts.

One of the most deprived areas in the country and one often shown on news bulletins is our ‘home area’ around Middlesbrough in the north east. Alyson & I lived and went to school in one of the more affluent areas from the ages of two and five. The area of Brambles Farm shown in Friday’s bulletins is one we know well and is where Alyson’s mum worked in a bookmakers. The interview with a mum and her child about the cost of living and the need to access support and foodbanks was a stark reminder of areas of poverty in our country. 

Today’s statistics from the NHS show the following;

  • The North East region has the highest infection rate in the country with 358 people per 100,000
  • Within the region Middlesbrough is fourth highest for infection rates at 451 per 100,000
  • The James Cook University Hospital that serves the area is in the top third of deaths in the country with 316 to date.
  • One day in the last week there were 24 new cases in London and 4,000 in the north east and Yorkshire.

The regional mayor had been resisting the reopening of parks despite the pleas of an MP who is a member of the government and one who is the Labour MP for Middlesbrough.  He is, however, in favour of reopening schools unlike his counterpart in nearby Hartlepool.

Other news this week

  • The daily death rates appear to be on a downward slope with today’s figure of 170 bringing the total to 34,636. But this week we had a figure of 50,000 for the ‘excess deaths’ for the period to 1 May.
  • Following the extensive coverage of the track and trace app on the Isle of Wight there has been little news on how the trial is going. I looked up the local newspaper and all it said was that less only about 33% of the population had downloaded it. Michael & David told me on our Zoom call tonight that the source code for the app had been released and there were lots of comments about functionality and not connecting with phones nearby. As per the blogger’s prediction last week there is talk of moving to the decentralised version of the app.
  • Tuesday 12th May was International Nurses Day and fell this year on the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birthday. Florence died a recluse after many years of a ‘mystery disease’ which some scholars now think could have been partly related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Much more is known about this today, and it could be that her reluctance to talk about the 21 months without a break looking after the injured soldiers in appalling conditions during the Crimean War, 30 years previously, was the cause. Many today are asking that our NHS workers and others on the frontline receive PSTD counselling in the coming years.
  • Belly Mujinga a Victoria Station ticket office worker died after being spat at on the day before the lockdown by a man claiming to have coronavirus, falling ill with Covid-19 two days later and dying in hospital a week after that. It is a shocking story.
  • The question I submitted to the group who choose ones from the public to the daily briefing didn’t get picked, but somewhat surprisingly one about the possibility of in the future of having a ‘Universal Basic Income’ (a subject I want to cover in a later blog) did, but was dismissed outright by business secretary Alok Sharma MP, who again was happy to use other countries as reference as ‘it had been tried and shown not to work’.

Thoughts at the end of week 8.

This week we were due to be on a cruise in Norway from Bergen to Kirkenes and back, on a small cargo boat calling at many ports and sailing up some of the very scenic fjords. A ‘first world’ problem I know, but we are some of the many trying to get a refund or rearrange for next year.

This week is designated Brain Injury Awareness Week and in the charity I am a trustee for it would be one of our main awareness and fundraising times. I wrote and hosted a Zoom quiz for our members to replace the events we would have had. It was a fun time of sharing. It has also been Christian Aid Week and the door to door collection I sometime do was cancelled. It raised over £8 million across the UK last year. I shared the preparation and hosting of another quiz for which we asked for a donation. We had 16 ‘screens’ with about 25 people joining in. This week’s appeal is to help victims of coronavirus in parts of the world less able to cope and where Christian Aid have projects. I encourage you to donate.

The advice this week from the government was to start wearing face coverings in some enclosed spaces such as on public transport and shops. Alyson had used a design from You Tube to sew some cloth ones for us all. We posted two each to Michael and David and I wore one for the first time to go to our small local Tesco. I only had it on for about 45 minutes, but that was long enough for me to have some understanding of how uncomfortable it must be to wear one for a ten to twelve-hour shift. And that is without the rest of the PPE needed to treat patients in ICU.

I read a blog from an academic at Swansea University who was recruiting people willing to take part in a ‘CoronaDiaries’ project looking at how people react in the crisis. I have been accepted onto the project so these blogs will be converted to PDF and stored in an archive for future researchers to use.

As usual on Sunday I attended a streamed service from Methodist Central Hall in London. The sermon and prayers related to a passage in Matthew chapter 5 where Christians are called to change ‘from  just being, to doing’. This struck me as particularly apt for the events of this week, as did our prayer,

may the poor be enriched, the bereaved comforted and the hungry filled.

Keep safe, stay alert, manage the risk and let’s try to ease the lockdown.

Life & Death – Coronavirus week 6 – light at the end of the tunnel.

Two narratives, but which do you believe?

This week’s total deaths has risen quite sharply as it now includes all deaths in the community (including care homes) and not just hospitals. At the end of the week the UK total is 28,446.

As I have gone through the last few weeks in this series of blogs, I note down topics that interest me and jot them down on my computer with some initial thoughts.  On the Saturday I just start to write my blog and usually an idea comes to the fore, sometimes I write too much or go off in a particular direction and have to scrap large sections or keep them for another time. Often I am up against my own ‘deadline’ of Sunday evening and end up ‘rushing’ the last part.   As I sit here this Saturday I am conflicted.

I have one narrative of the week’s events and my thoughts which some would describe as the ‘mainstream view’ as reported by the BBC and some on-line articles or extracted from large circulation newspapers. This view is dubbed by users on social media as ‘MSM’ or Mainstream Media.  MSM as a term is often used in a pejorative sense as either left- or right-wing bias, depending on the political view of the person passing comment. In that sense it could be described as ‘balanced’ given that some agree, and some disagree. Coronavirus has taken over from last year’s key word ‘Brexit’ as a topic that divides the nation. The division appears not to be the same extent, but there are plenty of people asking hard questions of the government, and much finger-pointing at individuals or institutions/organisations who they consider don’t represent their particular viewpoint or stance.

I am also preparing this weekend for our Bible study group on the sayings of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke, under the title ‘A New Society?’. One of the main reasons I value my faith is the way that Jesus offers a ‘counter-cultural’ challenge to the accepted norm, and is not afraid to take the issue to the ‘powerful’ in society. As it says in the introduction of the book we are using:

Roman, Greek and Hebrew societies were heavily stratified. Fine, if you were a healthy wealthy, educated, well-mannered, pure-blooded male of noble descent and free citizenship; beneath that you were second class or worse all the way down to worthless slaves at the bottom…Samaritans and Gentiles were scum, the poor, the sick and the deformed, the tormented, well, they must have offended God so you avoided them; prostitutes and tax collectors were beneath contempt.

Jesus not only ignores these divisions but takes special delight in raising the status of the poor…..all may come irrespective of their status. The parable of the great banquet reveals that the self-satisfied will be excluded while the poor needy, the rejects of society, will be welcomed in.

Jesus came to abolish the man-made divisions of race, sex and class.

My second version of the review of the week takes is an alternative more ‘radical’, some would say political angle.

The ‘accepted/acceptable’ view…

The week started with Boris Johnson giving a speech on the steps of Downing Street, addressing the nation on his health and the possible steps that would be taken. Apart from being a little breathless he was full of his usual optimism and stressing words and phrases like ‘good’, ‘amazing’, ‘can-do’, heroes and ‘pressing on’. He said that the government were working ‘full-tilt’ to protect the NHS and save lives. He mentioned that it had been 50-50 at one point but that he was back to lead. The analogy he used was of having been in an alpine tunnel to avoid the peak and we could see the bright sunshine and the green pastures at the end of the tunnel.

Lots of people said he was the best communicator that the government have, and it was good to see him back. Things would get better and later in the week he would announce the next steps.

On Tuesday we had a special one minute’s silence to remember the heroes who had died at work in the NHS and care sectors.

Boris didn’t appear at Prime Ministers Questions on Wednesday when Keir Starmer asked searching questions of Dominic Raab. The press and social media were full of posts stating it was good that ‘the other lot’ hadn’t won the December election, and imagined the chaos that a Labour party, led by Jeremy Corbyn, would have made of the current crisis. We learned that Boris and Carrie had a baby boy and Boris had been by their side all the way through. Again, there was great rejoicing and congratulations and many political opponents wished them well.  MPs across the spectrum suggested this joyous occasion would give a lift to the country.

Meanwhile Captain Tom, the war hero, managed to raise over £30 million for NHS charities in time for his 100th birthday. He got an honorary promotion to Colonel along with his card from the Queen and 120,000 from members of the public. Boris recorded a special message. Keeping the war theme going he had a flyover from the RAF of two WW2 fighter planes.  Tom was even number one in the music chart. Tom has inspired many other people to raise funds for the NHS and Virgin Radio DJ Chris Evans held a ‘garage sale’ of a huge amount of expensive memorabilia and items from his self-admitted ‘excess times’ over the last 25 years. This raised just short of £500,000. The money will be going directly to the ‘Scrubs Glorious Scrubs’ who are coordinating the voluntary efforts from seamstresses making much-needed scrubs for NHS frontline staff or, the ‘heroes’.

The daily briefings continued and there was focus on the promised 100,000 daily test target which, by a huge effort and extending the range of people who could get the test, was met when 122,000 were done on Thursday 30th.

That evening Alyson and I joined in the weekly ‘clap for carers’ with most of the people on our street. Drums, pots and wooden spoons, hooters, whistles were used. We talked in slightly derogatory terms about those who have not been out for any of the five times we have done it.

The daily briefings feature a new section whereby members of the public could write or record a question to be put to the briefing. This was welcomed as often these questions cut through the ‘gotcha’ questions often put by the press to try and catch ministers out or show up errors or misjudgements. The first one from Lynne in Skipton simply asked, ‘When will I be able to cuddle my grandchildren, who I am missing terribly’. The minister said he understood the question but reinforced the need to ‘continue with the measures in place’.

When the journalists tried to ask about PPE and a BBC Panorama programme that exposed a shortage in the national stockpile, and an emergency exercise from 2016, the minister said he didn’t believe any of that and that we just needed to carry on.  The press wanted to know more about the R-number and what value it needed to be for lockdown to be released. Professor Whitty was asked when we would learn the lessons of what had gone wrong. He said that would happen, but you don’t start in the middle of trying to focus on fighting the current crisis. When asked why our death total seems to be so much higher than the other European countries and second in the world, he pointed to what he described as a brilliant article in The Guardian by a professor of statistics on the difficulty of comparing countries.

Jeremy Hunt, former Health Secretary was very defensive when asked about the lack of PPE and ventilators. He said that President Macron had apologised for the lack of preparations but that he didn’t think Matt Hancock should and ‘now is not the time for the blame game’.

Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer was praised for putting in place a compensation scheme for the families of NHS and other frontline staff who had died as part of their duties dealing with Covid-19 patients. He also increased the guarantee for business loans from 80% to 100%. The week before he announced help for charities including foodbanks. On Saturday, a package of £76million to support vulnerable children, victims of domestic violence and modern slavery who were ‘trapped’ at home during lockdown. Pharmacies, who had previously been given £300Million to help with extra stock and deliveries, were to use consultation rooms as save havens for victims of domestic violence.

The ‘alternative/critical view’…

I can only imagine the Daily Mail headlines if Boris was the head of a taxpayer funded project managing an emergency caused by not taking the advice of experts from a few years before. Finding out that he had now fathered at least six children during two marriages and one extra marital affair, was not married to his current partner and had to deny several other similar allegations. He wrote a piece for The Spectator  in 1995 where he attacked single mothers saying it was “outrageous” that married couples “should pay for ‘the single mothers’ desire to procreate independently of men”. Not only that but in two months he had taken several weeks paid sick leave from his £150,000 a year job, and now was going on paid paternity leave. He went to his paid for country mansion set in 1,000 acres of Buckinghamshire countryside for a couple of weeks.  His bluff and bluster of a ‘Churchillian’ speech with its talk of light at the end of a tunnel might have been turned on him, and the question asked, ‘are you sure it’s not just an express train coming towards us…’?

The NHS is not a charity and should be fully funded by the government, the clue is in the name. It shouldn’t need Captain Tom or celebrities to get the general public to raise money for it during a ‘special season’. Of course there may well be a need to have a few ‘extras’ like toys/video games for the children’s wards or special luxury equipment for people in rehab or entertainment packages, but not vital equipment or PPE.  Well done Captain  Tom – only another £320million to go in order to fulfil the Brexit bus promise of £350million for the NHS for a week. It needs long-term guaranteed funding.

The NHS staff aren’t ‘heroes’ they are professional trained people who are willing to treat people in a system that has been underfunded and cut during 10 years of austerity.  Some of the work they do is extremely stressful.

Some people are asking the question whether, once this is all over will the government be willing to continue to give the funding needed, and will those people who gave their donation to Captain Tom still be happy if they have to pay an equivalent amount of increased National Insurance every year? Will celebrities who earn tens or even hundreds times more than a nurse or senior doctor be willing to buy less ‘trinkets’ and support their heroes?

Certainly the pharmacy contractors, something I know a little about, will have their £300Million ‘gift’ (actually a loan) clawed back out of future payments. The sunk cost of all the PPE and extra staff they have had to take on and the small profit lost from reduced counter sales, will not be recovered. No doubt they will have to go back to providing unfunded services for quite some time yet.

The minute’s silence last Tuesday was on the annual International Workers Memorial Day. An initiative setup by trades unions worldwide to fight for safe working for people whose employers make them work in dangerous conditions or with hazardous substances. The 28th of April is officially recognised by the UK government as a day of remembrance around the world. So should we have an official act of remembrance on the 28th of April every year, not just 2020?

Now is the time to be challenging the government on how it was that emergency supplies of PPE were not replenished after Exercise Cygnus in 2016. Now is the time to make sure the government sets up a suitable commission to investigate and learn the lessons.  A good question to the daily briefing might be;

If now is not the time to start learning the lessons of this crisis, is now the time to commit to setting up a wide-ranging independent group to look at it and report 6 months after the crisis is declared by the WHO to have ended. And is now the time to commit to ‘getting done’ all the recommendations and to fund them ‘whatever it takes‘?

Those ‘Masters of the Universe’ the bankers, who don’t appear to have changed much since they were supported after the 2008 market crash, will continue to control the supply of much needed loans. Some managed to bring forward their bonuses paid early, despite the Bank of England asking them to delay. Despite being given huge guarantees by the government (again) they will charge huge fees and take a lot of security from the owners of small businesses.

Returning briefly to Jesus, there was a time when people wore badges emblazoned WWJD, meaning ‘What would Jesus do?’ I think the first thing Jesus might have done was to ask the question ‘who are the people that will suffer most from this crisis and the long-term aftereffects?’ He might have decided the following priority list;

  • Take the homeless off the streets and put them all in hotels not currently being used for tourists, give them health screening and mental health support.
  • Before panic buying, make sure the supermarket stocks of food and necessary essential supplies go to foodbanks.  Or better still, miss out the food banks and give £5,000 to every person or family with less than £1,000 of savings in the bank, along with guaranteed delivery of essential food and other items for the duration of the crisis.
  • Guarantee a payment of the average weekly wage to anyone on a zero hours or part-time flexible contract.
  • Provide support to the people who care for our most vulnerable people in care homes or their own homes.
  • Make sure every child living in a poor household is taken to school every day, given a full education, access to technology and two free meals.
  • Pay for all the care needed to support children or adults with a range of special needs for the duration.

Only after that has been done and ‘maximum effort’ has been given to them, and others identified as in danger of potential harm, can civil servants start to plan and implement the type of support package given by the treasury early in this crisis.

So, which narrative would you choose to believe…?

Thoughts at the end of week 6.

The relatively wet weather has confined us indoors. Alyson has been reading Terry Waite’s book Taken on Trust, sewing masks for us all and going for long walks every day.

I have had many more Zoom meetings and took part in an online quiz for Christian Aid. I have two quizzes to write in the coming week. I attended my weekly streamed service from Methodist Central Hall.

We had a family Zoom with 15 of us who should have been at a large house in Ross on Wye for the weekend.

Alyson practiced her skills as a home hairdresser on me with clippers and special scissors I had bought from Amazon.

I managed to put another shelf in my shed and am confident I can now do the last one in under an hour!

Stay safe everyone.

 

 

 

So Whats the Story?….We did it!

During the weekend that Eliud Kipchoge ran a marathon in under two hours, I managed to slowly jog 10k around Tatton Park in 1 hour 12 minutes and 23 seconds. Eliud could have done it in 28 minutes 32 seconds!

The real story, however, is not my running but that together we raised a lot of money for four charities. I decided to include Parkrun Forever, the charity which, along with corporate sponsors, allows Parkrun to be free for everyone to take part in.

The total sponsorship for the charities are:

Cheshire South Methodist Circuit
£1,230.00

HIP in Cheshire
£2,860.50

UHNM Charity (Royal Stoke Hospital)
£1,312.50

Parkrun Forever
£145.00

That’s a total of £5,548

Thanks to more than 65 of my family, friends, church fellowship and HIP members who donated. Your generosity is overwhelming!

I know the charities will be grateful for the funds and it will allow them to support the people they work with, or who are helped by what they do.

The on-line donation pages have now been closed and the funds passed to the charities.

Every blessing

Ian Skaife
November 2019

 

 

So Whats the Story…? A 3-2-1 offer on a sponsored 10k.

The Short Story...

For those of you who have found this page for details on my upcoming 10k sponsored run, these are the basic details with links to the pages where you can donate.

I am running the Tatton Park 10k on Sunday 13th October 2019. I have decided to do this as it is near the seventh anniversary of my mum’s sudden death in 2012. I was in hospital struggling to walk or communicate after 12 of weeks of treatment for a brain injury. I stood and took my first small steps unaided at exactly the time of a missed call on my phone from my brother telling me that, after withdrawal of life support, my mum had died. She never saw me walk again..

It has been a long journey since that time and you can read more details in the ‘Long Story’ which I will post before the event.

I am running for three charities that have helped me and others.

Cheshire South Methodist Circuit – The key unit of mission for my local church.
For more details, and to donate go to my Just Giving crowdfunding page at
Just Giving Crowdfunding – Ian Skaife

HIP in Cheshire – The charity of which I am a member trustee and which helps people like me with friendship, support and saves us from social isolation. For more details go to
HIP – CAF Donate – Ian Skaife

Royal Stoke Hospital – (UHNM Charity) – This was the hospital that fixed me physically. They need some new equipment for the Neuroscience ward that I was on. For more details go to    UHNM Virgin Money Giving – Ian Skaife

That’s the ‘3’ from the title of this page, but there is a special offer which is the ‘2’. I have been fortunate to receive a legacy from my mum and dad’s estate and want to use that to Double Your Sponsorship (before Gift Aid). To be very clear if you give £10 I will add £20 so that it becomes £30 total. If you donate £50 I will add £100 to make it £150. Go on, challenge me…..!

The ‘1’ is me taking part in the event. In so many ways I will not be on my own as I have the support of my faith, my close family and so many friends from the charities and people who have worked with me.

My target is to raise £1,000 for each charity, but my hope is that together we can do so much more and touch the lives of a lot of people.

Thanks for reading this and if you feel that you can’t give, that’s absolutely ok. Just think of me, and the charities on the day.

Coming Soon – The Long Story….

Brian Bilston

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