Up before the sparrows.

Yesterday I had a terrible pang of conscience.
 
Saw the UK’s “new” Foreign Minister, Jeremy Hunt stuttering and gasping for air over the latest complete mess up caused by his department. I actually witnessed, live, a response the Foreign Office gave on Tuesday/Wednesday night to Sky News as they were about to review the newspapers coming off the press for the next day.  One paper had gone for the Foreign Office’s handling of women caught up in forced marriages. The Sky News presenter read off her tablet the comment from the FO which started “The UK is the global leader in acting against forced marriages ……..”. One of the reviewers, Benedict Spence, not an enemy of the Conservative Party, simply shook his head unbelievingly with the words “You aren’t telling me we keep a league table of forced marriages”.
 
Of course, Jeremy hasn’t been in the job long, only since 9th July 2018. It was also simply a slip of the tongue when three weeks after starting, he told the highest ranking Chinese Government ministers in Beijing that his wife was Japanese but had to quickly correct himself – she is Chinese! In front of the Chinese who hate the Japanese as Hunt should well know as he learnt (& can speak) Japanese in Japan. I can’t believe it actually is shown on a BBC News video.

 
Hunt was, until July, the longest serving UK Health Minister ever.  Reading his career on Wiki is like reading an encyclopedia of fraud, tax fraud, expenses fraud, incompetence, nepotism, attempts to sell off NHS and possibly criminal actions. But above all a three-time 360° (1,080°) turn on Brexit. Having voted to Remain in the referendum he has likened the arrogant EU Commission to the USSR,  and yet he had in 2016 called for a second referendum with the aim of staying in the Single Market. Hunt also called for getting rid of foreign doctors once Brexit happened, yet the medical profession claimed they were currently 6,000 doctors short of requirements.


In his six years at the NHS nothing improved, we had, as he left the ministry, an average three-week waiting time for a GP appointments. And just this week, the Government's own NHS report claims that 15 million appointments are missed each year costing £216 million. No wonder they are missed if the patients die while waiting for their appointments or simply by-pass the GPs and go into hospital.
 
I feel for the people working in such situations – police, fire, ambulance and medical staff – seldom paid properly for what they do, have to take verbal and physical abuse on a daily basis and then are not supported by their government which further lowers respect and in turn heightens the abuse from the public.
 
Back in the early 1970s when my first girlfriend was a trainee nurse at the Middlesex hospital in London’s West End, it was a very noble, well thought of profession. It had its problems and indeed the one I remember best was the nursing staff shortages and the explosion in “Nursing Agencies” who were charging a fortune to provide temporary staff and many NHS employed staff were being tempted away with the attraction of much higher wages.
 
The NHS and so many public bodies are simply pandered to at election times and dropped the night of the election. They all do it. The Home Office Minister Savid Javid today misusing the “Immigrant Major Crisis” accusing them of not being “proper” refugees. Whatever one's thoughts are on the why and what, the tone of the discussion is appalling. Simple lining up to take over from May.

 
But as we know Mrs May, in her very own words from 2002,  is leading the “nasty party.”  And she is renowned for being very nasty and above all very sticky. We shall see how things develop in the UK's civil war,

 
Now back to where I started – bad conscience!
 
I had an appointment booked today at my specialist Interist doctor. I like to ensure I go every 3 months simply to ensure I force myself to think about my health. When I first started using him, he put me through the mill, thrusting things into all sorts of places and sending me into narrow tubes to have beams blasted at me. Since then, the quarterly meeting has been no more than a 5-minute chat and review of any medications (basically none) and check of blood for iron and vitamin B levels which are often poor. It had been booked for late December but they called just before Christmas and asked if they could move it to today.
 
Yesterday, feeling just fine, thought I really should cancel the appointment as I had nothing to complain about and after the long Christmas break thought they may well have some extra cases and could do with some spare time. I phoned and tried my very best to get them to agree. No amount of pleading worked. “Please, come tomorrow as planned”.
 
So I did, setting off at 7:30 and discovering that at this time of year, the sparrows are not tweeting at that hour. In the surgery, blood done and while in the waiting room saw this lovely sunrise. It was actually a lot better in reality with the perfectly outlined snow-covered Alps along the entire visible horizon. Taking the photo through the glass in a very bright neon light-filled room has led to some distortion particularly on the right side. Not sure that is a cloud formation.
 
A very quick 2-minute chat with the doc and out and down to the local shopping centre, only to find the man-shops (electronics, DIY etc) were still not opened. Did have a quick look around the large supermarket which used to be Walmart and now run by a large German national chain. In the Walmart days, they would from time to time have cheddar which wasn’t Kerrygold pre-sliced-packed but blocks. To my great surprise, they had two large 5kg?  blocks both Irish Organic Cheddar, one mild, one mature. I took a hunk of mature. Not sure if expensive in UK terms, €26.90 (£25?) /kg. Seemed so to me but worth it. And to avoid any shouts of pro-EU/Eire, I have to admit I spotted something that knocked me off my feet -  a few small triangles of cellophane wrapped cuts from a block of English Stilton and from England too! I didn’t succumb, looking forward to my ploughman's lunch and added a fresh simple cotton-wool whole white loaf to my basket. My own, home-made pickled onions from October have had 10 weeks. Have to resign myself to not having any Branston.
 
I will be starting a name & shame campaign on “British” food manufacturers very soon – even if the try hiding behind businesses in other countries. Branston is now owned by the Japanese. Kraft Heinz, a US company but with more than a century of very tight links with the UK is another target with Lea & Perrins in their portfolio.
 
Don't watch this space…..