Poverty – Skat's Chat

Coronavirus week 18 – the long wait for a vaccine

Will it be the scientists or anti-vaxxers who stop us getting a vaccine?

For the first time in the last 18 weeks of lockdown I found myself agreeing with Boris Johnson. He was visiting a GP surgery in London to promote the importance of flu jabs in the upcoming winter. Referring to the opponents of vaccinations he called them ‘nuts’. Ever since (the then doctor) Andrew Wakefield persuaded many parents 20 years ago not to give their children the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine following some ‘research’ linking it to autism and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), the use of vaccines has been called into question.

Researching the claims by (now struck off doctor) Wakefield I learned the following facts from the General Medical Council (GMC) fitness to practice hearing of 2006 published in 2010.

A good study will include many participants, and Wakefield’s study included only twelve children.
Wakefield lied in the Lancet paper when he wrote that the participating children were referred independently after being diagnosed with IBD or other major gastrointestinal issues. In fact, many of the children were chosen specifically by Wakefield, and others were recruited with the help of the same lawyer who was paying him to conduct the study.
Even before publication of the study, Wakefield was working on patenting his own version of a measles vaccine, which he would sell at a great profit as a supposedly “safe” alternative to the MMR vaccine. The father of one of the children in Wakefield’s study was a cofounder of the planned business that would market this product.

The problems caused by Andrew Wakefield were in the news last August. Children who didn’t get vaccinated as their parents listened to him and not their doctors were now students, and an outbreak of measles was happening leading to serious side effects. The UK along with other parts of Europe has lost its status of being ‘measles free’.

The cofounder of Microsoft, Bill Gates and his wife Melinda are an example of people who have acquired enormous wealth, but are trying to use that to help others. They have been victims of terrible social media attacks and conspiracy theories as a result of pledging literally billions of dollars to vaccination programmes for children. They are partners of Gavi a global alliance of the WHO, UNICEF, The World Bank and donor countries with the aim of funding vaccination programmes for children in all areas of the world. This will improve health, prevent needless deaths and lead to less poverty. In June a little-reported summit of world leaders was hosted by the UK and pledged over $8billion over the next five years to the programme.

The UK can be proud of being the largest donor pledging £330million a year. As Bill Gates said at the time

To beat the COVID-19 pandemic, the world needs more than breakthrough science. It needs breakthrough generosity. And that’s what we’re seeing today as leaders across the public and private sectors are stepping up to support Gavi – especially Prime Minister Johnson. When COVID-19 vaccines are ready, this funding and global coordination will ensure that people all over the world will be able to access them.

In recent weeks Russia (who pledged no new money in addition to the $4milion per year share from a previous campaign) have been accused by the UK of trying to steal scientific secrets on the development of a Covid-19 vaccine. China, who also only pledged $4million per year, are still being accused as a possible source for the current outbreak.

To be clear, the pledges are for vaccinations of all types and not just Covid-19. Since 2000 over 760 million children have been vaccinated against polio, pneumococcal disease, typhoid, MMR, meningitis and rotavirus (that causes diarrhoea). However, the lockdowns in various parts of the world and the WHO advice to temporarily suspend vaccination programmes, to prevent people from spreading Covid-19, could lead to an estimated 6,000 children dying every day from lack of protection that vaccination provides. It’s a terrible dilemma for many countries’ health systems.

Their personal $1.6 Billion pledge hasn’t stopped the conspiracy theorists putting false information out about Bill & Melinda Gates, accusing them of wanting to use the programme for mass sterilisation to control world population, and even implanting a microchip as part of the programmes, to track everyone in the world.

This week DHSC announced that eligibility for the programme of flu injections for the coming winter has been extended to 30 million people in an attempt to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed by a flu pandemic and a second wave of Covid-19. We have had years of creating vaccines for seasonal influenza which is a slightly different strain each time, but even these aren’t always fully protective, but can lessen the severity of symptoms and reduce the rate of infection.

We have never succeeded in getting an effective vaccine against any of the coronaviruses. Even with about 150 programmes to develop one and almost 25 starting human trials, there are questions to be answered before getting one. Here are seven according to an article I read this week.

Is the vaccine safe? Early results suggest that there can be mild side effects from the vaccines, but more worryingly these can we worse in those more likely to be affected by the actual virus – the elderly and those with comorbidities. It is possible that a vaccine could make the disease worse in those who have it already.
Does the vaccine work? The general view is that it is unlikely to be completely effective and Professor Chris Witty has said that at least 50% would be a good result.
Will protection from a vaccine fade over time? There was some excitement when the vaccine being developed at Oxford produced the type of reaction expected, but it could be that this fades after a few weeks or months. However, there is also a theory that some element of ‘immune memory’ could result that helps the next similar infection.
Can we mass-produce it? Whilst the UK Government claims to have pre-ordered 100 million doses and be investing £150 million in new production facilities, there will be a long timescale. Some vaccines need to be stored in specials conditions such a low temperatures before being given. This could also be a challenge both in transportation and worldwide in countries with poor facilities and health systems.
When will we really have a vaccine? Are we talking about when we have a proven vaccine after clinical trials, when it is approved by regulators, when we have enough to give it to key workers in clinical settings and then those at greatest risk, or when we have enough to inoculate the whole world?
There is a danger that if supplies are strictly limited only those who can afford it, or have the political leverage to get it will be treated. This will only exacerbate conditions in the rest of the world who can’t afford it – and the virus will be around for even longer.
Once we have a vaccine, will people want to get it? So we come back to the anti-vaxxers or even those who are just cautious. In a recent poll about one in five Americans said they don’t plan to get a coronavirus vaccine, while half said they would. The rest were unsure. The US has a system where people need to pay or have insurance, so even in the richest country in the world cost could be a barrier.
What about booster shots? It is likely that any vaccine could need more than one dose to maintain effectiveness, so all the points about cost and organisation of healthcare systems come back into play.

There was an appeal for volunteers to take part in the clinical trials for vaccines produced by Oxford University and Imperial College London, so I thought I might offer – but although I am fairly fit and healthy I am over 55 so that was the end of that.

Vaccines aren’t the only treatment and this week again there have been trials of a new therapy based on a protein called interferon beta that have shown promising results when given as an inhaled dose. This was previously shown to have been effective for the treatment of SARS.

Other news this week.

A couple of months ago when the government was recruiting 25,000 people to train up to ‘track and trace’ contacts of those who had a positive test for the virus, there were newspaper stories of them having so little to do that they were watching Netflix movies. A story emerged this week that could have been interpreted in a way that could have suggested these people were making their own work. It was an ‘international’ story too.
The English NHS ‘test and trace’ system has been outsourced to a US company that uses call centres based in Scotland. Eight of the Scottish workers there tested positive for coronavirus, meaning that the Scottish system, called ‘test and protect’, had to get involved to trace their contacts – you couldn’t make it up!
In an interview on the anniversary of taking over as leader of the Conservatives and moving into 10 Downing Street, Boris Johnson admitted that there were some ‘open questions’ to be answered about the handling of the crisis in relation to timings of lockdown and protecting care homes. There was a less than generous video doing the rounds on social media claiming that as the virus was spreading across the world Boris missed several COBRA meetings, was uninterested in briefings and more interested in throwing a party to celebrate ‘getting Brexit done’.
Whilst the school holidays had started and some people were enjoying time in Spain, on Sunday morning all four UK governments brought back measures for people returning from the country to isolate for 14 days on their return. Despite FCO advice that travel to the Balearic and Canary Islands was still allowed, and only that to mainland Spain was not recommended, people returning from the islands still had to isolate. Such measures had been on the cards, but the suddenness and extent caused some controversy with many people again unsure of their holiday insurance situation. Many will also lose money as not all employers will be sympathetic to them taking more time away from work.
The number of cases is still falling very slowly with average daily deaths at 64 by the end of the week, down 8% from last week. The number of daily cases was averaging 662, which is up over 6% from last week. We are definitely plateauing but possibly to a sustainable level to live with as a trade off for an economic recovery. Total deaths reported for the outbreak was 45,752.
At the same time as gyms and swimming pools are allowed to open, the government was trailing an old idea of getting doctors to focus on reducing the levels of obesity in the country. This is one of the key factors that makes people particularly susceptible to severe symptoms of Covid-19, as well as being bad for general health. Laws on advertising junk food will be brought in and GPs will be allowed to prescribe 12-week health plans and exercise.

How was week 18 for us?

It was back to work for me with planning for the project I am doing with the accountants in Manchester. The pressure is on to complete the first stages of the system in the next three months. We are not planning to be away on holiday any time soon so this should be manageable.

Alyson continued to come close to getting a first shift with NHS 111 pharmacy advice service. She had more technical problems but at the end of the week all appeared sorted and this is a photo of her ‘mobile call centre with a laptop with connection to the NHS systems, two screens, a smartcard and a mobile phone system that allows her to call patients using an NHS number.

In the week more sports opened up, I was pleased to be able to follow some Major League Baseball (MLB) as the team I support the Toronto Blue Jays started a shortened season in empty stadiums. As the only team in MLB outside the US, the Canadian authorities would not give them permission to play home games in Toronto as it would mean them crossing the border to play away games and US teams crossing to play at Rogers Centre in Toronto. Right up to Opening Day on 23rd the team had no base, but then it was decided to play games at their minor league team’s base in Buffalo in New York State. Their first series was away in Florida, so they need to get the stadium ready for the first home series, which was to be next weekend but has been put back until 11th August.
My other sports team, Middlesbrough football club managed to survive in the Championship on the last day of the season on Wednesday – ironically away at Sheffield Wednesday. Two teams previously managed by World Cup winner Jack Charlton, whose funeral was the day before.

Keep safe everyone and let’s see what the next week brings.

I am thinking about stopping this blog for a few weeks as the situation in the UK appears to be in a steady state.

Coronavirus week 15 – the fine line between hope and crisis…

Did we go too soon?

Most of the week has been spent anticipating the 4th of July or ‘super Saturday’, ‘Independence Day’ when the pubs, restaurants and hairdressers were allowed to reopen. Also self-catering cottages, campsites and some B&B’s along with theme parks. We were waiting an announcement on which countries people will be allowed to visit without the need to quarantine on return. There were some concerns from scientists that we were going too far too fast.

For all of the above there were some who took it as a green light to start now. Airlines had passengers off to Spain, France, Greece and whole host of other places where they had second homes or were planning to be away for many weeks. Such people clearly had enough money to ‘self-insure’ against any eventuality. Street or ‘block parties’ continued and some pubs were open early. By the time Saturday came there were camera crews and reporters ready to capture the inevitable response to cutting a bit of hair or downing a pint.

The reports appeared to be mainly positive, but watching the crowds in Soho roaming the streets on a sunny afternoon there didn’t appear to be much social distancing going on there. As a reporter from the Associated Press put it

John Apter, chair of the Police Federation, who was on patrol in the southern England city of Southampton, said it was a busy shift, one that saw officers having to deal with naked men, “happy” drunks as well as “angry” drunks. He said the shift “managed to cope” but it was “crystal clear” that those who have imbibed one too many cannot, or won’t, socially distance.

I don’t usually use swear words but that last sentence is one to which my friend Gareth from the head injury charity might reply ‘no sh*t Sherlock!’.

A few days earlier the authorities decided that one place that the pubs and hairdressers would not be opening was the city of Leicester. Due to data showing the infection rate rising alarmingly in some post codes a ‘local lockdown’ was imposed. Many words were written about the possible causes, some speculating that the ‘hundreds’ of local small garment factories in tiny buildings that continued working were the main reason. Others said that it was the fact that the city is home to many people of Asian heritage where the culture is to live together in multi-generational households, some in areas of deprivation. It is well-known that two of the groups more susceptible to infection are minority ethnic and the elderly.

I am weary from hours of attending the Methodist Conference along with 300 others on Zoom, voting by virtually raising our hands or completing on-screen polls. I am emotionally drained by listening to speakers on so many topics that needed our action. They all seemed so relevant. We were diverted from our agenda on the first morning by several urgent ‘notices of motion’ that altered proposed resolutions around equality diversion and inclusion (EDI). I admit to being a little annoyed, but as speaker after speaker from the LGBTQI+, transgender, black and ethnic groups, those with disabilities both visible and hidden, spoke of injustice, hatred and, even worse – indifference, I couldn’t help but be determined that action is needed.

This is about justice and inclusion and the need to work more as a church to celebrate difference. Again I was challenged to look at the EDI learning kit – but it is so much more than that. It is easy to think that living as we do in a predominately ‘white European’ town, that I am not racist. But that falls into the example heard in church so many times, ‘well we don’t have any minority ethnic people in our church so we can’t be accused of being racist’! I would now be tempted to ask, so how many disabled, homosexual or ‘gender fluid’ members are in your church or even your circuit? Is the membership or attendance representative of the area you live in?

This focus on EDI may have influenced some representatives to elect our first BAME President elect for 2021. Rev Sonia Hicks also happens to be a woman. She has great experience having served as a Circuit Superintendent in three connexions: Britain, the Methodist Church in the Caribbean and Americas and the Methodist Church in Ireland (MCI). Sonia is quoted as saying;

As a Black person born in the UK, it is a great privilege to serve the church family I love in this new way. I will do all I can to honour this choice of the Methodist Conference and enable British Methodism to celebrate our God-given diversity.

Not for the first time, the Conference elected two women to the top posts as Sonia will be joined as Vice President for 2021 by Barbara Easton, a secondary head teacher from the West Midlands.

Next up at conference was Sam Monaghan, chief executive of our charity that provides services and care homes or living in the community Methodist Homes (MHA). They have been very visible on our news programmes as a case study for the problems in care homes. 400 residents have died so far. It was obvious that care homes were forgotten initially. I was in tears as Sam recounted the story of those losses and that of three members of staff. Our district team decided there and then that as well as EDI, MHA would be one of our priorities for the year. One of our group with homes nearby said that some church members had commented that it is more expensive to live in them. That’s partly because they are an organisation that pays its care workers the ‘real living wage’, decided by the Living Wage Foundation, rather than the national (minimum) living wage set by our government – something to celebrate not complain about.

After the main session of conference finished for the day attended (via Zoom again) a ‘fringe event’ about how our ‘bank’ Central Finance Board (CFB) were deciding which oil companies to divest themselves from, on the advice of the Joint Advisory Committee on Ethical Investment (JACEI) of which the Methodist Church is a member. There was some ‘controversy’ that we were still investing in three oil companies who were not meeting the measures set by the Paris Agreement on climate change. CFB explained that reduced returns and loss of income had to be balanced with a judgement about the companies ‘moving in the right direction’. There were also difficulties in the metrics of how to judge the companies. Change costs money, and whilst change needs to be worked through and company’s encouraged, it won’t happen overnight ( I know we don’t have time here, but I believe that science and technology will play a large part in solving climate change – it just needs investment and a push).

We spent many hours the next two days discussing long reports on important projects and issues for our church, but as time went on I got more worked up about the young people of our church who we call ‘3-generate’ pushing hard on the climate issue, and asking for CFB to overturn their decision to keep the three oil companies. This came to a head in a debate when, despite warnings from our treasurer and others that the loss of income and costs of doing so would be many hundreds of thousands of pounds and our own independent pension scheme trustees might decide to ‘disinvest from our own bank’ to seek better returns elsewhere, a notice of motion was agreed to overturn the decision. I resolved that I would speak up on the subject. Having spent many hours preparing carefully what I would say, by the time I was called to speak it was the very last part of the final session and due to overrun I had to quickly cut what I wanted to say from three minutes, to two and then one. I nearly didn’t speak but had ‘promised’ out treasurer that I would. At the last minute my printer also ran out of ink. I was very weary and tired so, instead of putting one negative point and one positive suggestion, I stumbled my way through one minute of the negative before being cut-off mid-sentence. I was shattered and devastated. The clip is on YouTube as the sessions are up there. This is a screenshot of me making my ‘speaking debut at conference’, looking distracted by trying to read what I am saying off the other screen next to my laptop.

It has only been seen by 2,734 people (mostly watching live at the time), and as far as I can tell no more since. Fortunately it is only up there until 1st August so not many more will view it!

Other news this week

As well as final details of the releasing the lockdown, the prime minister announced the ‘big spend’ infrastructure projects to get the UK moving again, a boost to the economy, and providing work for many of those workers who have lost their jobs in the last four months. This led to the inevitable calls to cancel the HS2 rail project to save money and the environment. People against this often quote that there is no need for people like us in Crewe to get to London 20 minutes sooner than we do now, particularly with more people working from home in the future. My response is that HS2 is not about speed but capacity. It is to get more freight off the roads and onto rail. To develop the current system to add another line or so next to current ones will take much longer, be even more disruptive and be more expensive. Just imagine the number of ‘back gardens’ you would have to destroy and the stations, bridges and signalling that would need to be altered. There are already lots of delays from upgrading the present system to current standards, not much of which does anything for capacity, but is making up for decades of underspending.
The list of countries we are able to travel to without going into isolation was published at the end of the week. There were 50+ on there but some confusion as some did not want a ‘reciprocal arrangement’ whereby we are able to travel to them.
We had one last ‘clap for the NHS’ to celebrate the 72nd anniversary of setting up the organisation. It was supposed to be for five minutes at 5 o’clock on the 5th, but there were only a few households out near us and certainly not for the full time.
The figures for deaths and cases kept falling, but were beginning to ‘flatten’. The average Monday to Friday official deaths were 124 this week down from 152 last. Daily cases are averaging less than 900 now. The total at the end of the week was 44,220 and average new infections are just over 500 per day.

How was week 15 for us?

Well the NHS finally appear to have got their act together and, using the new terminology, Alyson was ‘on-boarded’ on Thursday. She received her updated NHS email address on Friday, and has spent the weekend doing some final training on the system. Alyson completed the other modules around safeguarding and GDPR. Hopefully the last portion of the training will be done this week and she can arrange to choose some sessions from the roster in coming weeks.

During my time at conference Alyson did some Nordic walking at Delamere Forest having not done any since before lockdown. Normally she is part of a group but felt safe enough to go on her own and really enjoyed it. On Friday I needed to clear my head, so we spent a pleasant afternoon walking the forest tracks for 90 minutes.

Saturday saw us forming a ‘bubble’ with Michael as we went to his house to help put up a trellis for his climbing rose on the side of his shed. Alyson took the photo below and titled it ‘danger Skaife and son at work’. As I wrote a few weeks ago I am not known for my DIY skills and have not passed any on to my sons. It was a successful afternoon as Michael only hit his thumb half a dozen times with the hammer putting in the metal staples!

Michael had gone into his office in the centre of Manchester for the first time in more than 12 weeks to setup a new colleague with the IT equipment needed to work from home. He said it felt very strange with the added element of social distancing.

I will be going into an office on the outskirts of Manchester this week in order to meet Steve the director of the accountants I am doing the project for. This was the result of a Zoom meeting when I presented my report to the directors and it was agreed that rather than me try to go over all the systems and project plan remotely, it would be more efficient to be in the office, either side of a large table and share the various systems on a large screen on the wall. It will feel strange, but the company has spent a great deal of time putting ‘Covid-secure’ measures in so I am certain it will be as safe as it can be.

When I attended the weekly live-streamed service at Methodist Central Hall Westminster, I was confronted by my disastrous speech on Wednesday again. Three of the main participants had been at the conference and Rev Paul was part of the main organising technical team, and the person who probably pressed the button to let me ‘into the room’. Anthony, a local preacher and rep from the London District, had spoken well to another ‘notice of motion’ to persuade conference to do more about EDI.

Sunday was the first anniversary of Alyson’s mum’s funeral. Again we reflected on how different things were then. Not only the social distancing and the ability to at least hold some sort of tea and meet friends and relatives, but the weather a year ago was very warm too.

Stay safe, and we will see if the easing means we cross the fine line back over to the crisis side and a ‘second wave’.

Coronavirus week 14 – Not ‘the new normal’ but ‘a reorientation…’

‘So what’s the story?’….time for change

This week’s blog will be a shorter one (who shouted hurrah!) as I am busy this weekend taking part in a ‘virtual Methodist Conference’ along with 300+ other people from all over the country and the world. The Conference met for the first time with founder John Wesley in the chair in 1744, and has convened annually in the 275 years until 2019 when I attended for the first time in Birmingham. It would be easy to characterise our church as ‘old fashioned’ and living in the past, but the first thing we did was spend half an hour voting electronically via ‘raised hands’ and Zoom polls to put aside our ancient rules designed for a physical gathering. This had taken a great deal of work by our Law & Polity team in conjunction with the Charity Commission. It could have been a very short conference if we hadn’t voted unanimously to do so. Who says our church is stuck in its ways?!

A casual glance at our new President Rev Richard Teal, dressed in black robes with a white collar, the 60+ year old white male that he is, might have reinforced the old-fashioned tag. But his message that this time of lockdown must lead to a time of ‘reorientation’ – to see people and do things differently in the future, shows we are rooted in the present not the past. He used the word ‘oriented’ to describe the way we felt just a few months ago, comfortable in our situation, and the example of his feelings seeing his new grandchild for the first time to emphasise the emotions that existed at the time. Next he talked about feeling ‘disoriented’ during the last three months, unsure of what it means, and without many of the things which make our lives stable, including family and being part of a local church with all its traditions and routines. What we need to do next is ‘reorientation’ as a church, with the things we have learned. We are finding more people than ever wanting to be part of on-line services and gatherings, we have reached out to those who live in our area most in need – particularly those who are lonely and isolated. We need to value those who do vital work and have been underappreciated in the past.

Richard follows a President in Rev Barbara Glasson who exemplified the diverse talents we have in our ordained ministers. Barbara has spent her ministry working with people ‘on the margins’ or outside our church. In Liverpool city centre she started a group of people including those with learning disabilities, from the LGBTQ community, the homeless, and young people, who came together every week to make two loaves of bread, then gave them away to whoever wanted it. Never the same group two weeks running, the ‘Bread Church’ is still going strong. She currently directs the Touchstone Project in another city centre, Bradford, that works from a terraced house in a Muslim-Pakistani heritage area on interfaith relations. They are about to move into a refurbished pub. Barbara is a blessing in our church. With 2019 Vice President Clive we were encouraged and challenged to tell our story of faith – hence many of my blogs using their phrase ‘So what’s the story..?’.

Our new Vice President Carolyn, in her 50’s, described herself as an introvert, activist, impatient, easily bored and liable to make flippant remarks – an honest assessment of her humanity. She confessed to being uncertain about taking on such an important role, but the testimony she gave on how she got here was powerful. She described the church as part ‘mad’ – some of our members can get very worked up if people use the wrong cups, wear the wrong clothes, put papers on, or take them off, the noticeboard. There is a whole potential for trouble around anything to do with setting out, stacking or moving chairs! It is also part ugly – this ranges from telling visitors off when they sit in ‘someone else’s seat’, we can say the cruelest things to each other, have inappropriate comments and touching, bullying and controlling behaviour. Ministers from our overseas churches can be subjected to racist comments from our members, and homophobia is not uncommon. This ugliness extends to some extremely serious cases of abuse, which we need to continually guard against.

Carolyn’s hope is that the best of the work we do is really good and awesome; helping the weakest in society, and through our overseas relief and development charity, All We Can, those in poorer countries. She wants to use the year meeting with local churches and encouraging us to use our gifts to the utmost.

It is a very different conference this year, but our group of 8 local Chester & Stoke District representatives are keeping in touch, and helping each other during debates via a WhatsApp group. We won’t be able to hold the deep and passionate debates where speakers come forward to give different views, but we will be reviewing some important reports and committing millions of pounds of funding to important mission and outreach projects. We will also do the ‘mundane and routine’ business such as approving accounts, membership of committees and working parties. There is a sadness that the vital debates we held last year, and the provisional legislation needed, to make us a more inclusive church that recognises a wide-variety of relationships as valid, will not be completed as it was felt the format would not allow the ‘deep personal conferring needed’. Those in single sex relationships are already welcomed, and can hold any position in Methodism, but will have to wait until the conference of 2021 to find out if they can marry in our churches.

Our ministers in training are usually ‘ordained’ on Conference Sunday, but this year they had to make their promises on Saturday via Zoom as the first part, but will have to wait until we can get back into churches to have the physical ‘laying on of hands’ in the special service with friends and family. After one of the candidates made her promise from home our chair Helen sent a message on WhatsApp saying ‘we need to get Natalie into our district’, prompted by a framed message on the wall in Natalie’s house that read ‘Gin is my saviour’!

In the conference last year we learned that language is so important, not only in what is said but how it is said. Hence my wish not to use the term ‘new normal’ for our post-Covid society but the hope that, using Richard’s word we will ‘re-orientate’ ourselves. This week with the ‘White Lives Matter’ banner flown over a premier league match we learned again this lesson of use of language.

With cases not falling as fast and the death rate levelling off to about 150 per day, there is concern that the ‘welcomed’ easing of lockdown has sent the message that ‘it’s all over, we can have a party’. Scenes at ‘block parties’ in London, the celebrations in Liverpool after their team won the Premier League title after a 30-year wait, and overcrowding on the beach at Bournemouth during a very warm spell, raised fears of a second spike of infections. And all that before the pubs open on 4th July. Add alcohol to the mix and arguments over what constitutes ‘one metre plus’ in crowded pubs will lead, as one punter said, ‘to even more fights on a Friday night’!

I understand some of the reasons, but in my opinion it says a lot about our country that we work hard to get the pubs open, but not the gyms and swimming pools. Judging by the photo on the front page of one newspaper this morning, Boris Johnson clearly thinks an office floor is all that is need to become ‘as fit as a butcher’s dog’. Although I am not sure wearing a suit and tie is recommended gym wear?

We really are at a ‘turning point’ or maybe looking over a precipice with the virus. Infections are reducing, deaths at least leveling out, and there are signs of hope. Yet scientists keep telling us that there is no sign of the virus just dying out and it will be with us at some level for ‘years to come’. The next three months and how we as individuals react will be critical to the future path of the virus, even more than the past 14 weeks of lockdown.

We need to re-orientate our country if there is not to be a pandemic of unemployment. In my less optimistic times I worry about a complete breakdown of society as those in work continue to regain wealth, but those in lower paid jobs or no jobs get poorer and poorer – or am I kidding myself, as that has been the case for decades?

Other news this week

The daily briefings came to an end on Tuesday with the announcement of the next stage of easing, adding to the ‘its all over’ feeling. Those who are shielding were told that they could leave the house at the same time. There is uncertainty and real fear among some. It may be that the presence of the virus is such that on average you need to meet 1,700 people before you interact with someone who carries the virus, but the effect if you are the unlucky winner of that particular lottery is no less devastating if you are vulnerable.
With the briefings ending, you have to work hard to find the daily new cases and death figures. The four days figures Tuesday to Friday were 154, 149, 186, 100 and the total is 43,550 and the average new daily cases is about 900 which is at least moving in the right direction. Globally we passed 10 million confirmed cases and 500,000 deaths.
At the weekend it was announced that from the 6th July we will be able to go to some European countries via so-called ‘air corridors’, meaning that on return there will be no requirement to go into two weeks’ quarantine.
Infections in the US are continuing to rise at a dramatic pace and President Trump is still in denial, with his senior team appearing increasingly uncomfortable trying to defend the indefensible. It is such a large country and a major part of the world economy, even beyond the personal impact the loss of over 125,700 of its citizens.
World number one tennis player Nova Djokovic arranged a short tour of his native Serbia, and Croatia in which there was little attention paid the social distancing or ‘covid security measures’. Djokovic himself got the disease as did his wife and several of the organising team. He is a self-declared ‘anti-vaxxer’, an area I plan to explore in a later article as the ‘conspiracy’ theorists and those who ignore science facts are dangerous for the rest of us.

How was week 14 for us?

It didn’t start well as on Monday Alyson was seriously ill with sickness and stomach upset. At first I did wonder if she had caught Covid-19 from working in the pharmacy on the Saturday. It turned out to be a reaction to a new type of antibiotic she was taking. It was the first time in 93 days that she hadn’t been on our exercise bike and her Wii Fit. We had to cancel our trip to meet friends from Shrewsbury the next day for a walk around a lake at a park halfway between us. It was a gloriously sunny day and such a shame.

The weather stayed hot and sunny and by Thursday when Alyson finally got to meet three former work colleagues in our garden, we needed to put up the gazebo we had bought specially, not for the rain, but so that they could sit in the shade. It was the hottest day of the year at 30 degrees.

The opening of self-catering accommodation on 4th July means that our holiday at a National Trust cottage in a remote area of Norfolk is back on. It will be good to get away even if we can’t visit some of the places we planned to. It will be a change of scenery and walks along coastal paths. I admit to glancing at the availability of villas in Spain, Crete and Croatia when the air corridors were announced, but Alyson is a bit more cautious and is waiting for the ‘second spike’ and what happens when the ‘winter flu’ season starts again.

I continued to do my local parkruns twice a week and am feeling the benefits both in some weight loss, and clearing my mind of confusion.

We had a meeting of our head injury charity trustees via phone and the figures I had prepared as treasurer showed that our reserves have increased. There really has been great support for small charities like ours who can’t hold fundraising events. We have been fortunate with the grants we have applied for – and received. Apart from the National Lottery the money we have received is from local trusts and benefactors wanting to support Cheshire-based charities. We have not furloughed our two employees, as the work they do supporting members who were socially isolated even before the restrictions caused by the virus, is vital. We too will continue with ‘reorientation’ of our services, taking some of the ‘virtual coffee mornings’ and chat rooms forwards to reach those who haven’t wanted to attend physical meetings even in normal times.

Alyson’s hairdresser called to ask if she wanted an appointment in the first few days of opening. I am getting used to her long hair and she doesn’t want it taken back to where it was, just the fringe tidied up. I love the haircuts Alyson gives me with my trimmers and not sure I will ever go back to paying for one!

Although there was no formal Conference Service this year, our new President and Vice President joined the service at Westminster Central Hall via Zoom. Richard’s sermon was about John Wesley’s drive for Methodists to strive for ‘personal holiness’, but to live out the gospel we proclaim via what he called ‘social holiness’. This is a radical, active care for those in society who need it. Richard talked about the last letter Wesley ever wrote being to William Wilberforce supporting the abolition of slavery. He worked in the desperate slums of London where he saw people in extreme poverty continue to work and help others. Richard used a modern-day example of this social holiness by telling of a member in his circuit in rural Yorkshire, inspired by her faith to help the local food bank and deliver to the housebound and isolated in her community.

Vice President Carolyn led us in prayers for those who are broken-hearted, worried about the virus, struggling with loneliness and living in conditions where social distancing is impossible. For countries where health systems are overwhelmed and asked that we use our social holiness to do what we can.

We finished with video messages from our sister churches around the world from, Bolivia, Rwanda, Australia, The Caribbean, and Italy. As Methodists we adapt one of Wesley’s famously sayings ‘the world is our parish’.

Keep safe and let’s see what the next week brings us.

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.