So another day looking out at the kitchen garden, as I write, and quietly formulating what needs to be done over the coming month and the Spring. At some point I need to clean and tidy our small greenhouse but keep putting it off. Thinking back over the 27 years since we moved into this house I always think of mid-January and February as months when the ground is so hard with frost that it was best to plant Garlic and Onions in advance. Garlic needs a period of cold as does Rhubarb. Now I’m worrying that the ground is so wet that the Garlic crop, which is beginning to show, will rot. The weather has been so mild that Rhubarb has begun to sprout – which is not a good sign at all. Our hardy Leek crop has started bolting too. All of which raises questions about whether the changing weather patterns will lead to these crops being unviable. So much for global warming and the benefits of a Mediterranean climate! No doubt growers will adapt but what other changes will the unpredictability of our weather bring?
In the middle of the emergency, lying prone on the gurney, I listened to the professionals in discussion, the paramedics and the ambulance crew, together with the Doctor and the Air Ambulance that had arrived. A discussion centering on which hospital I should be taken, the University Hospital in Cardiff or the nearer Royal Glamorgan Hospital, which would entail travelling through narrow country lanes. It was decided time was of the essence and it would be the Royal. I am grateful for that decision,as it was undoubtedly a factor that played a part in saving my life.
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The Royal Glamorgan Hospital’s Accident & Emergency department had been under threat of closure. If this happened, the result would undoubtedly be lives would be placed at risk by taking people on a much longer journey to another hospital. The shorter journey would save lives. I am living proof that this was the case! A public campaign eventually elicited support from local politicians, and the Royal Glamorgan has stayed open to serve the surrounding communities.
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Our NHS — National Health Service — has been under relentless attack for decades, since the time of Thatcher, from a bogus political doctrine with its feet in the former US President’s economic musings and which English politicians subsequently titled monetarism. British Society has endured a line of politicians who have put in place austerity and the swingeing cuts to public services which are paid for out of peoples taxes, or so we are led to believe. Even America’s supposed President Trump got in on the attack against the National Health Service! If ever there was proof that there was something good about the NHS, this must be it!
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The value of the NHS is the provision of a service that is free at the point of demand! I was taken to an Accident& Emergency ward. There was no question of payment before treatment. My heart was shocked into a regular rhythm. Three days of tests followed. On the third day I had an angiogram, and on the fourth day a defibrillating pacemaker was fitted. On the fifth day I was discharged to home. No payment and no debt.
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The beginnings of the NHS came from a profound need to make available medical treatment to the mining valley’s population and communities whose health had been seriously undermined by harsh work conditions, diseases like Measles, TB, and Typhoid to name a few, as well as poor diet and mal-nourishment. Also the demands made on women’s health by large families and lack of effective contraception. Housing conditions were inadequate and very often appalling, exacerbating the risk of disease becoming rife. And, it has to be said, mine owners who prioritised profit above the well being of their workers and their families.
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Regrettably, a direct consequence of miners taking strike action was they were left with limited financial support and soup kitchen’s to fall back on. The 1910 strike lasted a year. Families had to subsist on very limited means. The record for child mortality and death of mothers following child birth in 1910 are utterly shocking. The Great Depression that followed added to the difficulties communities were already facing.
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It is from this background the NHS was established. And, once again in this age of Covid19, we have discovered the service cuts imposed by governments, following the bogus monetary doctrine of cuts for short term financial gain, have left the population exposed to the extreme effects of the pandemic. People’s lives have been, as a direct result of lack of services and criminal neglect, lost through government dictat. There is now a need for a reset.
Rob Cullen artist, writer, poet. Rob runs “Voices on the Bridge” a poetry initiative in Wales. Walks hills and mountains daily with a sheep dog at his side.
"I have enough time to rest, but I don't have a minute to waste". Come and catch me with your wise words and we will have some fun with our words of wisdom.
Celfypridd 