In 2016 did you vote Leave or Remain? Since the narrow Leave vote, Boris’s ovenready deal became a slow pressure cooker but finally on Thursday the deed was done. My mind goes back to my youth. Birmingham used to be known as the city of a thousand trades. We had British Leyland employing hordes of locals making Austin, Rover, Morris, Riley, Wolseley and many other British-made cars. Our clothes’ stores stocked woollens made on Lancashire looms, there were huge iron and steel works and prosperous ship building industries. Britain used to be the biggest manufacturer in the world and the most technologically advanced. By the time I was born, home-grown manufacturing made up 50% of the UK economy and exporting was a major industry. But, no longer. Well, a new year and new self-sufficient era dawns on the horizon. Boris now needs to forget ovenready deals and work on bringing back old-style, home-based industries which employ lots of local people in cooperative, innovative ways. That’s the winning recipe for a newly-independent Britain, Boris.
20th December 2020
In a normal year, national excitement would be at fever pitch. But this is not a normal year. TV of yesteryear would be awash with the best ever scheduling, expensive Xmas advertising by the leading stores jingling out at us every few minutes. Not this year. What on earth has happened? A local FB friend called Ray posted this pic on FB, which says it all really. He says we're destroying our lives out of fear of a virus that has an average 0.43% infection fatality rate (Source: BMJ Global Health), those who are frail and with existing co-morbidities being the main casualties of this group. Is he right? Should we carry on with our lives as normal, letting businesses build up the economy, individuals getting vaccinated, going to bed if/when we feel ill and ploughing extra resources into the NHS? I feel sorry for Boris. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. Never in the history of mankind have leaders had to deal with such a thing. I still blame China.
13th December 2020
As I wait to be called for the vaccine, every time the phone rings I jump. Will this be it? Don’t know how long it will be as don’t know how many 80 year olds there are in this area. As some of those at the head of the queue suffered anaphylactic shock, the latest idea is for everyone, after having the vaccine, to sit in a secluded room at the back of the surgery for 15 minutes to see if we’ve become more bat-like. On Wednesday, Birmingham will be told whether it can move from its present tier 3 to tier 2. Hope so, as I feel for small businesses who simply can’t continue as it is. To take my mind off things, we walk around our local park, social distancing, and admiring the giant father Xmas and the inventive coloured lights all around. But, could someone tell our neighbours across the road that flashing blue lights were not a good choice. Every evening we think the police are outside waiting to arrest us!
6th December 2020
73 years ago today, when I was born, it was dark. My father was still away in the army so my mother had to bang on the wall to alert our neighbour for help. No NHS then. But today is darker. Growing up, I had the Salk polio treatment on a sugar lump, but I wasn’t the first to take it so long term effects were well known. On Wednesday I’ll be near the top of the queue to be a guinea pig for the new Corona vaccine, where bat poison will be injected into my arm. Unlike the Salk treatment, no-one yet knows the long-term effects. Some say it might affect our individual DNA! I look outside. A dark hooded shape sidles past our window, face muffled, eyes downcast. I almost expect to see Boris at the end of our road, tolling a bell as he calls out ‘Bring out your dead’. I shake my head and think of medical students. The first thing that’s drummed into them is ‘Do no harm’. They, like me, will have to take everything on trust. Today is supposed to be a happy day but....
