896 - The letter

Claudia was a blogger long before I was on Xanga. (it's still around) She met people all over the world through it. (go figure) She even sent and recieved letters from some people. (go figure) She has kept in touch with a few people over the years. One is a guy named Tony that lives in England. He shoots an email to Claudia every once in awhile just to say hi or to get a perspective on something from the other side of the pond.

Tony recently sent an email. I read it and instantly thought, "POST"! He talks about England's healthcare, the USA's percieved view of it, how it's wrong and more. He then throws in his view's on Lockerbie.

I've xxxxxx'd out a few town names to privatize it a little. But I did have Claudia ask Tony if I could use it for my blog.

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Hi Claudia,

My mother can sympathise with your dizziness, she gets it a lot too. She’s been convinced that it’s her pills that are causing it, though her doctor has been at lengths to explain to her that the cause isn’t so much the pills as the fact she’s HAD A STROKE!!!!!

One of the curious things about the day she went into hospital was the surprise on the face of various medical people when they discovered she was on no pills at all. It would seem at my Mothers age in life a high propensity for pill taking is seen as the norm.

Certainly they’ve fixed that, she now has an enormous amount of pills that have to be taken at various times of the day which I tend to set out in various cups and egg cups of an evening around the house so she knows what to take when.

The big news here the last week or so is all about medical care actually, chiefly the scaremongering being whipped up by Republicans on your side of the pond over Obama’s health reforms and the criticism our National Health Service has been getting in the process, (fired up by that awful Palin woman)!

I watched on the news the other morning a rally somewhere in the Midwest where enraged Republican pensioners were telling OUR BBC reporter how rubbish our health care was, how people in Britain are left to die, and how we can’t get access to proper care and that our life expectancy is supposedly the lowest in Europe.

It all sounded like something out of the dark ages, and no amount of attempts at convincing them otherwise seemed to have an effect ... THEY KNEW THEY WERE RIGHT!

From my side of the pond I can’t decide what is more amusing, the enraged republicans fighting for the right NOT to have free health care, or the enraged citizens over here, who normally like to moan constantly about the NHS but who have suddenly all risen up in its defence.

(Twitter apparently has been running hot with angry Brits blasting an unsuspecting America).

Much as Japan did with Pearl Harbour, (as we like to spell it), in slagging off our NHS the Republicans have awoken a sleeping giant.

The attitude here would seem to be WE CAN COMPLAIN ABOUT IT COS IT’S OURS ANYBODY ELSE TAKES A SIDESWIPE AT IT THOUGH AND WE’LL HAVE THEM!

In truth the NHS is far from perfect, but it is a remarkable institution which as a nation we’d be poorer without.

I must admit my admiration for it has gone up considerably since my Mother went into hospital.

I had heard scare stories, expected very little, but have to say how impressed I have been with the level of care and after care that my Mother has received.

For example I’d been led to believe by many folk that I’d have to be careful that they didn’t try and shove my Mum back out the door too quickly, where in reality getting them to agree to letting her out proved to be the problem.

After being moved from the main City hospital to the local Cottage Hospital in xxxxxx to recuperate the Doctors were so concerned by my Mothers high blood pressure they twice cancelled her return home. The problem was that a lot of the elderly in the Cottage Hospital have extreme cases of Alzheimer’s, and therefore being in with them was sufficient to keep her blood pressure high, as such I had to convince her doctors that their keeping her in until her blood pressure decreased was very likely the thing that was raising her blood pressure.

Even then she had to have a home assessment, and has since had numerous visits from social services and age concern to check on her wellbeing.

Indeed if anything the major obstacle my Mother has had is very much that caused by herself, in that frequently when she’s had visits from care workers asking her what help she would like her response has been ... ‘oh I’m fine!’ .... Which has proved to be an annoyance to me.

In fact that first day in the admissions ward where various doctors came to inspect her, it was handy that I was there as well, in that my Mother seemed to have an almost pathological desire NOT to tell them things.

It wasn’t deliberate as such, but I can only assume is something built into people out of politeness, a desire not to be a nuisance.

Throughout her examinations I had to keep making the doctor aware of things, including, when he noted poor vision in one eye, that actually that was nothing new, she’d had that since the measles in childhood.

As such I have a lot more faith in our health service now that I’ve seen it at first hand than even I had when all I was working on was what I had been told and read in the newspapers.

You of course have excellent firsthand experience of the American system, not only as an employee but now as a patient as well.

As such I’m curious to know your thoughts both on how it is, and on what Obama is proposing.

The other thing to rattle cages across the pond is of course the Lockerbie decision.

Is it causing as much furore across the water as our Media suggests that it is?

Lockerbie has significance to me in that it’s just a few miles across the Border from us, I can remember quite clearly the night it happened, hearing the explosion of the plane that night and mistaking it as thunder.

It played a recurring role when I worked in xxxxxxx and xxxxxxx and an even bigger almost daily role in my time at Border television, (Border crews were the first TV cameras on the scene that night), and even now, the archive I am currently acting as custodian for holds all the original camera rushes from that time.

(Likely at least some of the shots you have seen have come from us).

Indeed, I spent the 20th anniversary last December at the memorial in a dark wind and rain swept Dryfesdale Cemetary in Lockerbie acting as Digi prompt operator, (AKA ‘autocue’), for our live evening news broadcast from there.

(Oh I am going to miss doing stuff like that)!

Is it understood in the United States the difference between the Scottish Government and the British Government?

As someone who is not a fan of the SNP part of me is quite amused at the mess they have gotten themselves into, (Alex Salmond is an obnoxiously smarmy individual somewhat reminiscent of a toad whose overly pleased with himself).

However it seems likely our government also has not exactly played a straight bat.

(England won the ashes against the Aussies yesterday so expect the odd cricketing metaphor).

There are Oil deals to be done in Libya, and though I can’t envisage an SNP Government being told what to do by Downing Street, I can well imagine Westminster officials quite happily sitting back quietly, and thinking ... ‘If we say nothing, keep out of this, and let the Scottish Government take the heat, then this all might just work to our advantage’.

Truth is Governments and administrations on both sides of the Atlantic and the Middle East have had plenty of nefarious dealings over Lockerbie which has given rise to plenty of suspicion that Libya in the form of Magrahi was more the scapegoat than the true villain in this affair.

The common thinking over here is often that Iran played a major part as revenge for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by the U.S.S. Vincennes earlier in 1988.

There’s lots of evidence to support an inquiry and possible retrial, but that seems likely not to happen now, which again possibly suits all Governments, wherever they are, and no matter what protesting noise they make about it.

For me, having given it some thought I don’t think a suspicion of innocence is enough to let someone walk free, and the Scottish Government’s claim that this is part of their judicial procedures ‘compassionate release’ mandate also seems a poor judgement on this occasion.

There are lots of arguments for showing compassion, and often I’d subscribe to them, but in a case such as this, that affects people on an international level I think not enough thought was given to the feelings of those who had lost loved ones. Were this just a crime that effected Scottish people then the Scottish Government could make their case, and eventually, come election time, if the nation as a whole felt this a big enough blunder could vote them out of office. But there are victims from all over the World, (more even than the UK and USA), and in that instance, to make a unilateral decision without regard for those who don’t have a voice seems wrong.

Things for me carry on much as normal, still waiting to see how things develop with my job, though hopefully there should be an answer to that by the end of net month.

Hope you are feeling better,

Tony