I am so angry with myself that I am now too sick to follow this up – I do hope that Moor takes up the challenge and digs into this Sunday Times story. It looks as though Savile is in danger of losing his crown as ‘Britain’s’ most prolific sex offender’ and it might be handed to Levi Bellfield. After five years hard work on the Savile case, it is galling that I can’t see it through to the bitter end, but there you are.

I hope to be going home from the hospice tomorrow, back to the Tender’s Nest that Mr G has constructed for me; every Ship has it’s Tender moored alongside, and so does his Ship.

Sorry, that is as much as I am capable of writing today, it takes the morning of medication to straighten me out after a night’s heavy sleep and leave me pain free for the afternoon and by that time I am ready for another sleep! Tomorrow I go home to Mr G who knows exactly how to care for me – they don’t mean to be unkind, but they are always so busy in here and they have so many rules and regulations that have to be followed – that they only have to have one man who was seriously ill (which they had) and one lady who fell out of bed (which they did) and there is no nurse available left to deal with me consequently I was left from 4.30am screwed up in a corner of my bed, unable to straighten myself out, with the pain of lying like that increasing by the hour. It was 9am before they got round to me and I had to chose between having pain relief and breakfast or having a wash. I decline the wash….so I stink, but by the time Mr G arrived at 10,30 (he’s not allowed in any earlier – another rule!) at least the pain was easing and he was able to slip me my vape e-cigarette, which naturally I’m not allowed either…’no evidence that it’s ‘safe’ – so after 10 days I am suffering from severe nicotine withdrawal symptoms.

What would you do? Go home with some pain not yet controlled from the ‘EastAnglian Centre of Excellence for Pain Control’ with some pain not yet controlled – although it would be by Mr G applying the pain control at 4.30am and keeping it up every two hours on the dot, plus copious Yorkshire Tea and frequent puffs on the e-cigarette and just his warm comforting hands and presence – or stay here?

I’m choosing the ‘Go Home’ option! I can put up with a bit of pain, I loathe this place.

Apologies; I’ve veered off the subject of Levi Bellfield. Please do use the comments to discuss your views on whether they should have been following up the Bellfield leads, or chasing the imaginary ‘Britain’s Greatest Living Paedophile’ – Savile – across the country.

Here’s a copy and paste of the Surrey Police article from The Sunday Times for those of you who don’t have a subscription to The Sunday Times.

New evidence seen by The Sunday Times links the murderer of the schoolgirl Milly Dowler with a spree of unprovoked bludgeon attacks on women across Britain that the police never fully investigated.

Levi Bellfield, a former wheel-clamper from west London, is now linked to 24 violent attacks and rapes in the two decades before he was caught in 2004. This would make him one of the most prolific serial attackers of women in British criminal history.

Two newly identified suspected victims of Bellfield last night called on the Metropolitan police to investigate their cases. In separate incidents they were both clubbed over the head while walking alone.

Police intelligence on Bellfield seen by The Sunday Times shows detectives suspect him of nine attacks, in addition to a series of rapes and assaults previously investigated but never prosecuted.

Bellfield, who is serving two whole-life tariffs, is challenging his conviction for murdering Milly Dowler in 2002. He was also convicted of killing Amelie Delagrange and Marsha McDonnell and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy.

Officers from the national police serious crime analysis section (SCAS) uncovered a series of unsolved attacks that took place in London, Surrey, Middlesex, Sussex and Lancashire.

The intelligence was collated before Bellfield’s first conviction in 2008 but has not been revealed until now. The attacks match his movements around the country at the relevant times.

One of the victims identified by police was Sarah Spurrell, who received three blows to the head as she was walking to a friend’s house in Hastings, East Sussex, on a January evening in 2004.

Although the police SCAS unit identified Bellfield as a suspect, it did not inform Spurrell and dropped the investigation after he was convicted of murder.

Spurrell, a 38-year-old mother of two, said yesterday she was “100% sure” her assailant was Bellfield after being shown his picture and called for her case to be reopened. She confirmed that the size, build and eyes all match Bellfield’s appearance and believes she could have been the “next Milly”.

Officers found the new cases by searching the national crime database for specific factors including: a female victim, aged between 15-40, no evidence of sexual activity and the use of a heavy weapon around the head.

Two of Bellfield’s murder victims — 19-year-old gap-year student Marsha McDonnell and 22-year-old French student Amelie Delagrange — were bludgeoned to death with head wounds.

Former detective chief inspector Colin Sutton, who led the murder investigations, confirmed the research and said it suggested Bellfield was a serial offender.

“We were looking for blitz attacks on lone females, especially where there was no robbery or sexual assault, because that is something we know he did which is extremely unusual. Attacks of that ferocity for no apparent reason are rare,” Sutton said.

The new cases date back to July 1994 when a 29-year-old woman was hit from behind on the head by a blunt object at a deserted petrol station in Hinchley Wood, Surrey. The assailant — wearing a balaclava — struck her twice more after she fell to the ground but she still managed to fight him off.

A woman, now 49, who was attacked in Croydon, south London, in 1995 said last night: “The force of the blow wiped my memory . . . It fractured my skull and I was in hospital for several days.

“I didn’t know Bellfield might have been a suspect. I’d like the police to investigate. It’s not enough that he’s in jail. I want to be sure it was him.”

She said the incident “broke” her confidence and it had worried her for years because her attacker remained unknown.

Two similar assaults on women took place in Blackpool, Lancashire, in 2003 and 2004 when Bellfield was visiting the town for nights out. Several other cases occurred around Twickenham, west ­London, near his home.

Sutton described the evidence linking Bellfield to the attacks as compelling: “We couldn’t find any similar offences that we couldn’t link to Bellfield.”

The cases were not investigated further. Senior officers at the Met decided to use resources on other priorities as Bellfield was in prison for life. “I didn’t dis­agree with the decision, although I would have been happy to continue investigating the crimes,” said Sutton.

The crimes Bellfield has been linked to include: six rapes of teenage girls, three rapes of older women, an attempted murder, one kidnap, an indecent assault and three further hammer attacks.

He was tried for two of those cases: the attempted murder of Irma Dragoshi, then 33, from Hounslow, west London, who was hit over the head with a blunt instrument; and the kidnap of Anna-Maria Rennie, 17. The jury failed to reach a verdict.

Bellfield, 49, who has converted to Islam, is in Durham’s high security HMP Frankland. He claims he was wrongly convicted for the murder of Milly Dowler, 13, and says he now has CCTV footage and a new witness to back up his case.

Last year the Met held another investigation into Bellfield which proved inconclusive. It did not comment on the nine new cases in the intelligence research.

Sandra with Claudia – another trafficked hen. No, I don’t know what she does with the eggs either – they pop out what ever she thinks. Perhaps she boils them humanely.

There is a carnival atmosphere up in Lancashire. The drums are beating, that distinctive sound of the new age traveller that we hear at the G7 conference, the ‘go green’ meetings, the ‘call to arms’ of the vegan social justice warrior. Fracking is about to start. The Police have a half million pound a month budget to keep order. You may think there is a whiff of anarchy amongst these demos – but no, they have a leader, a Sebastian Keeley, who want to  ‘reclaim the power’ from the elite and hand it to the, er, non, elite, which presumably makes them the new elite, does it not? Perhaps they get Yurts instead of second hand tents and prime locations to erect thier tents……

The Mister Whippy ice-cream van is already in position, no sign of a burger van – too many vegans I suppose. The beleaguered boss of the Fracking company was pointing out in vain that his was the most highly regulated fracking site in the world; he was being measured for air quality, water quality, and traffic disturbance – the environmental agency had already done 6 inspections and he hadn’t even started work yet!!!

I often feel like writing these days, but then the pain returns, or the nurses have some procedure they need to perform, or the Doctor is calling in – life is never as quiet and organised as it used to be when I jumped out of bed and sat down in front of my computer and started another post…..but today that music exercised me and I wanted to know more about it. What was it called – Garage Band? If you know the answer please let me know in the comments, it’s driving me nuts.

I’ve been led on a merry dance. Somewhere along the line, I found the original track for Rolf Harris’s Waltzing Matilda. Practically the Australian National Anthem these days. Veering off on a tangent, as I often do, I pondered on it’s fate. Had it been vanquished from sight in the same manner that all Jimmy Savile’s Top of the Pops appearances had been? After all, Savile had never been found guilty of heinous crimes, only ‘believed to be so’ – whereas Harris actually had been convicted, however unfairly. Nope, Waltzing Matilda was too much a part of the fabric of Australian life to suffer the same fate it seemed. There is even a museum dedicated to the song! It burnt down a couple of years ago. Now I was firmly on the track of Matilda – my mind works like this, in case you haven’t noticed.

The tune to Waltzing Matilda is actually Scottish – “Thou Bonnie Wood of Craigielea”- if you really want to disappear down a rabbit hole try googling that marching song….Ms Raccoon did, and didn’t emerge for an hour or so – the things I do for you! So almost back on track with Matilda, and what is this I find? If its not Matilda Higgins….

Sandra Higgins emerged 2008 in Ireland. Sandra is a psychologist who founded the first Vegan animal sanctuary in Ireland, the world possibly, where animals who had been ‘trafficked’ and enslaved for human use were saved (stick wth me,  please). Amongst these modern day slaves torn from their mother’s breasts crying piteously, so that we humans could consume thier livers and slice up their thighs without so much as a thought, was a hen called Matilda. Eventually Matilda came to the end of her natural life – I shall let Sandra take over at this point:

The night she was dying I promised her I would dedicate the rest of my life to vegan education. In her memory I opened Matilda’s Promise, Animal Rights & Vegan Education Centre. Go Vegan World is one of the activities of that centre.

Never again would humans wait at a hen’s rear end for their ovary to produce another egg, a potential son or daughter, carelessly tossed into boiling water for a few minutes, ready to be consumed by an eager monster of a human youngster,

It must have been a moving evening, comforting young Mathilda as she lay gasping for breath, I have tears in my eyes as I think of it. Perhaps I should open the first Palliative Care Centre for Hens?

Anyway, moving smartly along, Matilda’s ideas have gathered so much financial support that she has enough money to buy full page adverts in many of the main stream media’s dying organs. They, of course, are so short of money these days that they don’t care where the money comes from.

So today I had a visitor carrying a full page from the Daily Telegraph.

‘You are going to love this’ he said.

He was right. It seems that Sandra is now campaigning to have us stop drinking milk. ‘Humane Milk is a Myth’. Calves are torn from their Mother’s who are still bloody from birth (watch the terminology) and are searching frantically for their daughter’s. They tremble piteously and drink milk from rubber teats on the wall instead of their Mother’s nurturing bodies. All because human’s take their milk! Their son’s are slaughtered for their flesh, and they themselves are slaughtered at 6 years old – their natural lifespan is 25 years.

Now we may not agree with gummint, and think they should be replaced with dreadlocked morons like young Sebastian but surely before they go they could pass a law for us saying that it was illegal to traffick baby calves and stop people having milk in their tea?

Think of Matilda. Her feathers gradually fading in colour – do they have Hen Ketamine?

Tilly is short for Matilda. In case you didn’t know.

Just thought you’d like to know where my mind had been today, wandering along all sorts of paths – don’t think I’ve actually lost the plot yet, but my ability to write a serious post is still in doubt. So it’s either nothing, or put up with my meandering.

We have so much to worry about in the modern world.

Jackdaw Corvus monedula Scotland, April

When we bought this house, we noticed that there appeared to be a pair of Jackdaws living in the chimney. We had to block off the chimney, so felt rather bad about serving these elegant birds with an eviction order, but serve it we did.

They may have lost their home, but didn’t give up their ‘territory’. Day after day they would reappear and stalk round the garden collecting breakfast, then later for twigs – they were building a new house somewhere locally! I was busy in those days, living a normal life; write something in the morning, then get on with housework and helping Mr G transform this derelict pile into a home for us.

Now life has changed for me – immeasurably. I remain fixed in one place, and only see what is directly in my line of vision, can only reach what is left within arm’s reach. If someone puts a cup just two inches out of my reach it might as well be a mile away – I can do nothing about it. It is not the physical problem of what has happened to me that matters – it is the psychological impact of being so utterly dependant on other people and so restricted in my world directly in front of me.

However, I have learnt that there are bonus points to this new life. I study intently what is happening in front of me – and since that includes a bird conservation meadow – and my pair of ‘prancing judges’ as I call them – the Jackdaws – that has a fascination all of its own.

Not many people get the opportunity to watch a pair of birds from the warmth and comfort of their bed, day after day. They start work every day as dawn breaks – and coincidentally, when I wake. I love the early mornings – the mist rolls over the meadow, the deer stretch their legs and start to graze; the white barn owl flies out of the old tin shed next to the signal box and starts his own search for breakfast; the marsh harrier swoops over all of them, searching for a baby rabbit, or perhaps an unfortunate baby bird – all of them solo.

Yet my prancing Judges work as a pair, their grey wigs bobbing up and down as they scour the lawn. Is it that their own young are so safe they can both leave together? Perhaps they have no young? They seem devoted to each other, so perhaps they mate for life like swans?

This morning I discovered the answer – so flipping obvious I cannot believe it had not occurred to me before.

I used to travel to the northern industrial towns a lot in my search for stained glass when that was one of the things I specialised in selling. For some years I have collected chimney pots. Mr G now has them dotted around the garden, flower pots in the top of every one, bursting with a display of marigolds and begonias and peonies to ensure that wherever I look there is a blaze of colour – but one of the pots is rather special. It has a ‘crown top’ and cascading down the sides are a series of downward facing ‘pipes’. I assume it was made to ensure that some noxious gasses successfully escaped from somewhere.

There may be a cascade of orange begonias filling the top of the pipe – but that intelligent pair of jackdaws have discovered that they can hop into the pipes on the sides and still live in a  chimney pot……who says a chimney has to be on top of a roof in order to call it home!

If I hadn’t been in a fixed position, day after day, I doubt that I would ever have realised that this is where they are living. It is forcing me to examine more closely the world around me, and to realise how much of our life we waste rushing from one place to another, forever searching for the greener grass – when actually the greener grass is under our feet all the time.

There really is a silver lining in every cloud.

From: “Tullett, Kate” <Kate.Tullett@medicalprotection.org>

Date: 13 July 2017 at 14:11:40 BST

To: “Tullett, Kate” <Kate.Tullett@medicalprotection.org>

Subject: MPS comment on NHS Resolution 2016/17 report on clinical negligence costs

Commenting on the 2016/17 NHS Resolution annual report into the cost of clinical negligence to the NHS (just published) –

Emma Hallinan, Director of Claims at the Medical Protection Society (MPS), said:

“While there has been a small but welcome reduction in the number of new clinical negligence claims, the cost of claims to the NHS continues to spiral with £1.7bn paid out during 2016/17. This is up from £1.5bn in 2015/16, and since 2010/11 spend has increased by a worrying 98%.

“It is important that there is reasonable compensation for patients harmed following clinical negligence, but a balance must be struck against society’s ability to pay.  If the current trend continues the balance will tip too far and the cost risks becoming unsustainable.

“Legal reform is required to strike a balance between compensation that is reasonable, but also affordable – this includes the introduction of a limit on future care costs based on a tariff agreed by an expert group and fixed recoverable costs for claims up £250,000 to stop lawyers charging disproportionate fees. From the £1.7bn paid out in 2016/17, legal costs accounted for 37% of that bill.

“Given the pressure on the NHS and the change to the personal injury discount rate – which has significantly increased the NHS’ provisions for future clinical negligence costs – there has never been a more pressing time to tackle this issue, alongside continued work to enhance patient safety.”

END

Notes

Full NHS Resolution annual report: http://resolution.nhs.uk/annual-report-and-accounts-201617/

Brief NHS news article: www.nhsla.nhs.uk/CurrentActivity/Pages/News.aspx

MPS launched its Striking a Balance campaign in June, setting out a package of legal reforms to control the spiralling costs of clinical negligence and strike a balance between compensation that is reasonable, but also affordable. Find out more at www.medicalprotection.org/balance

For further information about MPS contact: E: kate.tullett@medicalprotection.org T: 0207 640 5290

About MPS:

The Medical Protection Society (“MPS”) is the world’s leading protection organisation for doctors, dentists and healthcare professionals. We protect and support the professional interests of more than 300,000 members around the world. Membership provides access to expert advice and support together with the right to request indemnity for complaints or claims arising from professional practice.   

Our philosophy is to support safe practice in medicine and dentistry by helping to avert problems in the first place. We do this by promoting risk management through our workshops, E-learning, clinical risk assessments, publications, conferences, lectures and presentations. MPS is not an insurance company. All the benefits of membership of MPS are discretionary as set out in the Memorandum and Articles of Association.

Kate Tullett

Media Relations Manager
Tel:            +44 (0) 20 7640 5290

Mob:          + 44 (0)7989 423667
Fax:           +44 (0) 20 7399 1371
Email:       kate.tullett@medicalprotection.org

Medical Protection Society  |  Level 19, 32 London Bridge Road  |  London SE1 9SG  |  UK

Last year Jeremy Hunt did impose a four year period during which junior Doctors must work for the NHS after receiving their training. Not before time and it should have been longer!

Since the mid 90s, GPs have been required to publish their salaries, so it is not hard to find out whether it is the wage gap that is prompting this exodus.  In Australia they can expect to earn £156,000 -and the sun shines!

This Government wants to widen access to GP services to evenings and weekends. And it is prepared to redirect and add extra money to do so. Is this so unreasonable? The public perception of GPs is that they are wildly overpaid, a figure of £100,000 is often quoted – and indeed some GP partners in some surgeries may reach this figure, but it is not an average figure for all GPs. Many GPs these days are female, and they tend to work three day weeks, combining child care with their job – that means the surgery must pay locums to cover the extra hours. Sometimes two female GPs ‘job-share’ – nothing wrong with that except that the NHS has trained two Doctors to end up with the equivalent of one Doctor working!

The British Medical Association (BMA), the Doctors ‘Union’ has been described as ‘greedy, selfish, petulant, arrogant, pompous, elitist and out of touch’. I can’t expand on that, it cover all angles. The BMA passionately opposed the idea of a state-run health service such as the NHS  from the start, prompting Nye Bevin to later give the famous quote that, to broker the deal, he had ‘stuffed their mouths with gold’.  Sixty years later, the BMA opposed working an average of less than one hour extra each week in return for the best financial settlement GPs have ever been offered.

I think that in looking at the current situation with Doctors, one needs to separate the views of their union with those of the average Doctor, in the same manner that we separate the views of John McDonnell, with his calls for ‘revolution in the street’ from the views of the average Labour supporting working man.

I have talked at length with my own GP – he visits every day, and we usually end up talking about politics. He would love to ‘wind down gradually’ as he comes up to retirement. In order to do so, he must pay a higher rate of insurance premium for working less hours. Confused? I was. Apparently the insurance companies work on the theory that since he is not working full time, he is more likely to make a mistake, less likely to be fully aware of all the factors in a particular person’s care – thus more of a risk. I can just about follow the line of thought there – but it means that he will be penalised for working part time. The figure of £17,000 for mandatory insurance cover was quoted.

Whereas in the past, people were more willing to take the expertise and professionalism of those who cared for them as a matter of trust, today, post Harold Shipman, a better informed and more questioning society requires that trust to be underpinned by objective evidence.

So he must also – at his own expense – be required to revalidate at five year intervals, by producing evidence of his continuing fitness to practise. He must be able to demonstrate a minimum number of hours of continuing professional development; quality improvement activity such as an audit; feedback from 12 to 15 colleagues on what he is like to work with personally and professionally; feedback from between 28 and 34 patients; how he has learned from significant clinical events; and complaints or compliments he has received. Evidence of all these must be contained in his portfolio.

I cannot argue with any of that, all laudable aims  – but I think Shipman’s adoring patients would have ensured that he passed his box ticking exercise, and since his was a sole practice – there would have been no colleagues to put forward another view……..

Then there are the changes being made to his pension. The reduced cap means he will have to pay 55 per cent tax when withdrawing pension from April this year. The one million cap sounds generous – but will only buy a lifetime income, after tax-free cash, of just over £27,000 a year – with payments linked to inflation and protection for a spouse.

Andy James, head of retirement planning, at Towry financial planning said: “A lot of them have their eyes on the door.

Many GPs have set up their practice so they can pay up to 28.5 per cent of their earnings into their pension and when they look at the potential tax charge for continuing to do this, they are thinking: ‘What is the point of carrying on?’

You can see the factors mounting up on the ‘do I really want to go on working part time versus retiring all together’ page. I should stress that at no point does he resent the new measures being introduced – he is simply weighing up the virtues or drawbacks of continuing to provide his wide knowledge of patients in this area on a part time basis or retiring altogether.

In total 5,114 GPs have retired in England between 2011 and 2015. Across Britain, 10.2 per cent of full-time GP positions are vacant, according to figures provided by the Royal College of General Practitioners. With an ever increasing population, it can only get harder and harder to get an appointment to see your GP.

I am lucky, my GP is of the old school; this is a small village – many of the inhabitants he delivered as babies. Those he didn’t deliver he has known for a lifetime. When our local builder gashed his arm open helping someone moor a boat recently – it was straight round to the surgery and in between patients, he was duly stitched up and bandaged. Every day when he finishes his surgery he drops in here to see how I am, and to chew the cud over the latest political development and have a cup of tea. Yes, he is aware that I am writing about him – he has given his permission.

He hasn’t made his mind up yet as to what he is going to do. What would you advise him to do?

There had been an old boiler room attached to the side of the house when we bought it – a haven for spiders, a toilet for the resident scruffy lap dog belonging to the previous owner on rainy days, a defunct boiler, the remains of an old oil burning stove, and several coats that would have been out of date 25 years ago. He hired a skip and filled it to the brim in hours.

Then came the task of digging out new footings – apparently the previous owners thought that the entire house might slide into the river under the weight of their new boiler if they didn’t give it at least three-foot of solid concrete underneath. Sheesh! Mr G swung a sledge-hammer against that concrete for days, finally enlisting the help of Trev the Trannie. Trev might be midway through his two years of dressing and living as a woman, but he knows how to put a jack hammer to good use. The village was monumentally impressed. (When you live on the main road, you acquire Assistant Site Foremen by the dozen as everyone drags their dog down to the post office for their morning paper).

Eventually four tonne of hardcore was dug out and put into bags – and the task of refilling the trench with er, another four tonne of concrete, began. I think this is like the offside rule, something that women will never understand. What was wrong with the four tonne of concrete you started off with? Eh? *Sighs* Best not to ask.

Eventually the building started leaping upwards as through possessed. A foot high, two foot high. Windows appeared on a lorry and were fitted to the walls. The ribbed framework of a roof appeared looking like the upside down remains of a beached whale – and surprise, surprise, the thatchers who are booked up for two years ahead, turned up one day and announced they had five days free before they started their annual holiday and thought they might just spend it thatching this little bubble on the side of our house…

The plasterers appeared, a rarer sight than traffic wardens in this neck of the woods, and amazingly, they also had some free time before they went on holiday, sufficient to plaster the ceiling – I was beginning to recognise the unseen hand of our friendly but very elderly local builder at work. Favours were being called in, in the rush to get this finished for me.

Mr G was permanently locked in his workshop, machines whirring the only sign that he was still alive. He rushed hither and thither with tape measure, but refused to discuss what he was doing. Since my bed in the kitchen was placed facing the front of the house, I could see nothing of what was going on behind me, occasionally a nurse would exclaim ‘Ooh, it’s going to be beautiful’ and be told to ‘Shush!’ Until finally I was wheeled out to see the semi-finished version. Still the floor to be done…..the oak was ready but the man with the machine needed to turn it into floor boards was due to go to the Isle of Man for the races…would he do it in time?

He did.

And finally I was wheeled out in state into my new abode. It is fantastic. My favourite jugs laid out on the widow cill. All the power points connected up to plug my bed into; a new table (a lash up according to Mr G!) made out of an old desk top to sit beside my bed and hold my computer and all the things I need within reach – tissues, notepad and pen, radio, mouthwash (this medication gives me the most disgusting taste in my mouth) telephone, buzzer to call my carer, everything I need to exist. Even double doors that make it feel as though I am out in the open world.  What more could I want? Mr G is an incredible man.

No, this is not a ‘Blocked Dwarf’ rant about the Smoking Ban, nor a ‘like Gildas without the IQ’ thesis about some fascinating tit bit of tobacco history;  I save those for Grandad’s site. (where, hopefully, this week, there will appear my humble treatise  on Picardian  Smuggling Dogs of the C19). [Ed: Must Google Picardian Smuggling Dogs.]

“Now you are married, have a child and responsibilities you can NOT afford to smoke!” said my late pietist Prussian mother in law, who obviously mistook me for the German, even Prussian, son-in-law she had hoped for.

Prussians, for those who don’t know, are Germans with a Pickelhaube inserted where ‘die Sonne notten shinen’.   To be fair to the woman, whom I grew to love…after  20 years or so…I was a bit of a heavy smoker back then – up to 5 packs a day when I could chain smoke in an office. Though to put her command into some financial context,  a pack of fags cost 4 DMs, and had for as long as anyone could remember – I’m talking even ‘quality’ brands. 4 DM. Which was, in 1989, about £1.30!

Can’t recall what 20 B&H cost me in the UK then but I have a feeling it was well over twice that.  At the time I was bringing home, net cash, £1k or 3K DM a month and we had but the one baby and we were living rent free-ish with the parents-in-law (NEVER DO THAT! How my mother in law survived the 6 months of sharing a 2 bedroom flat with us I shall never know, I came close to swinging for her on an almost daily basis).

Could I afford to smoke? Probably not, says the older wiser me, but at the time I replied: ‘I work 60 hours a week with 20 hours travelling time in the dark and cold of a Hessian winter. I can’t afford  NOT to smoke!’

Then there was my mother-in-law’s bestest friend, Edda the evangelical Norwegian. For those who don’t know, Norwegians are Germans with a ski stick inserted ‘Solen skinner ikke’ (‘Solen’ from ‘Sol’ or the Latin word for sun I’m guessing?) who, when  The Bestes Frau and I moved into our first flat, admonished us to “save every bean”.  

So, of course, I immediately stopped drinking, smoking and started reusing teabags? No! of course I didn’t.  Both those good ladies had grown up in the aftermath of WW2, both had been through the sort of poverty in childhood that would now be classed as child abuse. Both had started their married child-rearing lives on a budget that involved adding  water to stew to ‘extend it’ and not being able to afford new shoes if the children had inconsiderately decided to grow again. Both had felt themselves blessed to have married non-drinking non-smokers. Not for any pseudo scientific health reasons but simply because a couple of Dmarks a day on beer and a couple more on fags would have meant the difference between having jam, butter and real coffee for breakfast or petrol based marg and ‘Mucke Fuck’ (Ersatz barley based fake coffee). Anyone here over the age of 60 or so will probably recognise what I’m describing.

Life everywhere for young parents was tough back then after the war and in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Hell it remains tough today. The lack of money and lack of sleep don’t change with fashion.

What I’m trying to say is, it is none of my concern what young couples spend their money on. I do not expect young couples (or single parents for that matter either) to bring their babies up in the sort of relative ‘poverty’ we ourselves had to. In fact I believe that each generation should ‘have it better’ and when my youngest and his wife spent the equivalent of my first month’s real wages on a wide screen plasma coffee-making TV I held my peace.  I’m happy that my Grandkids’ Mom and Dad can afford not only to run a car but his big bike as well, and that on fairly low wages. I accept Granddaughter needs a wardrobe full of more clothes than I think or the wife have owned over our entire lives.  And if they want to replace the perfectly good, serviceable and easy clean linoleum floor with carpet hand woven from water proof yak wool then fair enough.

Yet this morning I was chatting to a young, 23 years old, soon-to-be-Father of my acquaintance. He’s what I’d describe as a ‘good kid’, works hard at some just over minimum wage job, treats his equally hard working ‘missus’ well, doesn’t get too drunk too often and aside from the fact he is a Norfolker, speaks ‘Norfolk’ not English, and insists on discussing something called ‘football’ with me and regaling me with the ups and downs (a lot of downs it seems) of ‘his’ team ‘the Canaries’, he seems an all round well balanced young man. Not too bright, not too thick, content with his lot in life, now he has finally gotten his missus in the club and his driving licence. Pretty sure he’ll  make a good Dad.

So this morning he ‘do say he doo’ that he and she had been out shopping at the weekend and had bought a baby buggy. For £500 (in words: HOW BLOODY MUCH?!?!)  I hadn’t had time to pick my jaw off the floor when he added ‘it was 2^nd hand, new they cost £1.2K’.  

In what universe does any young couple pay more for a 2^nd hand buggy than his or mine car is worth?  I-Candy? I can bloody not!

I get that every young parent wants to give their child the best; I surprised myself and shocked my own Aged Mother Dwarf by paying £25 for a pair of welly boots for Granddaughter2 not so long back (in my defence, they had pink cats on them and proper pull up handles!).

But five hundred nicker for a buggy? Stroller on, mate! Leave it out….in the porch all night John, not!

Sweet Jesus wept but he was scared he’d get tear stains on the i-upholstery.

The price is what gets me. Not the fact that my young friend was doting enough to part with what must be a week’s wages + for them both for a buggy, a buggy that will be no more serviceable than the one I got for £5 at the car-boot for Granddaughter2 when she is here. That and the fact that there are young couples out there who think that paying £1.2k for a buggy in ‘Thai fusion lime green and pastel grey with McPherson® suspension’  is somehow ‘normal’ or the ‘right thing’ to do – I don’t care how much they bloody earn.

The landlady once recounted how she made nappies for her baby daughter out of old curtains. You can imagine her reaction when I recounted my experiences of this morning to her.

[Ed: Mighty fine nappies they were too, with tasteful brown fern leaves dotted about on the most expensive terry towelling that the Canadian Embassy could run too; sadly, folded in the required triangles, they looked disconcertingly like skid marks….sweet memories!]

I hate to sound like either ‘Heli The Outlaw’ (my mother in law), Edda or even my own Aged Mother Dwarf  but the saying ‘Cut your cloth to fit your coat’ seems appropriate.

Phil Frampton feels that this leaves IICSA as little more than a box ticking exercise. Those powerful institutions – the church, the local authorities overseeing children’s homes, the Department of Education, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police, indeed the Home Office which had direct responsibility for children’s homes, have been able to fund expensive legal teams and will have both foresight and time to consider the questions that may be posed to them – however survivors will only have a voice where it is provided by pro-bono law firms and no core participation allowing them to pose questions directly.

This is not equality of arms.

Last July, the inquiry’s truth project began. Unfortunately, the statements given to it by survivors have no legal standing – they will appear in the final report, suitably anonymised, much as the girls from Rochdale appeared in Professor Jay’s report on Rochdale.  Tidy little ‘quote marks’ fitted in to the margins to make the page look better. This is not what the survivors envisaged when first David Cameron said, ‘No stone will be left unturned’ nor as series of ‘chairs’ promised to put ‘survivor’s voices at the heart of the enquiry’.

Lowell Goddard went so far as to say that she believed survivors lacked ‘objectivity’, and thus should be excluded. She went on to refer to survivors as ‘the victim community’. This was a woman so sure she was not part of the establishment, that she married a Scottish Laird with a 6,000 acre estate, has given legal advice to 29 different governments, and was both friend of and neighbour to, Lord Brittan.

This is not equality of arms.

I am better known for writing in defence of those falsely accused – it has not blinded my eyes to the fact that there are genuine victims of sexual abuse, nor to the fact that they are slowly and quietly being shafted by this inquiry. They deserve better. 

There were several girls at Duncroft who had been abused – not by the staff, nor whilst they were at the school – so I was never unaware of the horrors of child sexual abuse. Karin Ward had most definitely been abused by members of her family long before she arrived at Duncroft. So was Anita Veale who became a close friend of mine whilst we were both there together. She had felt unable to unburden herself of that memory when we were young, but came to see me years later after she had become both alcoholic and a heroin addict. We talked for hours as she told me of her famous grandfather that she had felt unable to ‘unmask’ as a sexual predator – and I thought I had given her solace and kind words – it was not enough – would anything have been enough? That night she took the train from my house, lay down on Hampstead Heath and drank a bottle of vodka. By morning she was dead. I never have, never will, forget her.

In my work in Wales, I came across many young girls with learning disabilities of varying kinds who had been sexually abused, and received compensation through the criminal injuries board. They would not have received that abuse if there had been sufficient staff to monitor them – so it has always pained me that so much money has been spent chasing false allegations against high-profile names and so little at looking into the institutions that allowed abuse to continue – in all its forms.

IICSA, in its present form will be a ‘talking shop’ for highly paid academics and lawyers to produce endless glossy reports – this is not the answer that the survivors were looking for. They are no nearer to achieving transparency as to the actions of those closed institutions. It is a great shame that some of those with a more ‘vivid imagination’ – the fake ‘victims’ – were allowed to hog all the media limelight, and consume the millions of pounds investigating their ‘fake claims’ leaving people like Phil Frampton still fighting for justice on a shoe string.

They deserve better.

Now awake, I searched for something to take my mind into different areas. The venom directed at me over the past two months is still very fresh and I have to be vigilant that it doesn’t overwhelm me. I found this programme on iPlayer. For anyone born after 1979 it will be educational – for anyone born before then it will be a welcome reminder of how life was in the 60s for teenagers. I do recommend you watch it. It is well researched, and well documented, not a ‘surface feeder’ type of documentary at all. More in the league of Adam Curtis’ work.

It showed how the ‘nature boys’ – a group of German naturists who lived free off the land, and started the first ‘Diggers’ shop in San Francisco where food was literally free (Did you know that Nat King Cole’s song ‘Nature boy’ was written about them? I didn’t) joined forces with what was then the radical left – believing in free love, equality of sexes, even the rights of paedophiles, all came together with the first ‘yippies’ (not hippies at that stage) those following the mystical beliefs of the far east – and even dates the start of the ‘Hippy’ explosion as being January 14th – with a concert in San Francsicso where all three ‘tribes’ were invited to join together and form one movement.

Both Aldous Huxley (Did you know that Jim Morrison’s group was called The Doors in homage to Huxley’s book ‘Perception of Doors’? I didn’t) and importantly, Alastair Crowley with his Satanic beliefs were invited to join in and 100,000 free ‘doses’ of lsd were handed out for the occasion. The idea was that lsd would enable a melding of thoughts amongst those present, so that what would emerge was a single figure that believed in eating raw vegetables from the nature boys; would absorb Crowley’s Satanic beliefs; the Marxist rhetoric of the radical left – now neutered to form the basis of Spiked magazine, where latter day Marxists still expound their views – and present it under a single banner of ‘hippies’ fastening flowers to the guns of soldiers heading for Vietnam.

It was the start of a remarkable counter-revolution that didn’t look towards the traditional working classes to rise up against their masters, but rather harnessed the ideals of a young, well-educated, middle class that had no need of jobs and could afford to indulge themselves. More than worth watching for anyone interested in how that social counter-culture explosion has led us to the present day ‘horror’ of viewing any sexual behaviour between young and old as being repugnant and criminal – at that time, both young and old were being pressured into behaving in exactly the way they did – or being seen as ‘not cool’.

It was only an hour-long so I followed that up with another programme; A repeat from 1978 ‘Where have all the flowers gone’. It followed the progress of several early hippies who had had to abandon their ideals of free love, free food, and free-living, when they formed relationships and had families. They had finally realised that carrots are only free to be picked if someone – the farmer – has paid for the seed; paid for someone to tend the plants; paid for someone to pick the crops – and that they couldn’t create nirvana in isolation. It was an excellent choice to watch straight after the first documentary.

That took me up to 8am and the first nurse of the day – and I promptly went back to sleep until 2pm when the next set of drugs arrived, so have answered no emails, seen no DMs and am now on the hunt for something to watch this afternoon – suggestions more than welcome.

I think I have finally sorted out the comment facility on this new blog, though as someone pointed out, all the people who were happy to comment on my old blog seem to have deserted me, frighted off by the intimidation and threats, so if you are out there and have never commented before, then please do – it encourages me to write, and that is good for me. It keeps me focussed on what I can do rather than on what I can’t do.

36 thoughts on “Catching the 60s by it’s Tail….”

1. I knew The Doors were named after Huxley’s book only because I was a huge fan of both. Odd notion that a bunch of people taking LSD together would somehow develop a mass belief in anything as it’s a very introspective drug. But they were naive times of course.

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2. In turn those German ‘nature boys’ had taken their inspiration (or were themselves) “Wandervogel” which translates as ‘wandering birds’ , a movement that started in Germany in the arse end of the C19. No lesser an another then Chateris featured them in one of his ‘Saint’ stories:
   

   Anyways, this dwarf is as pleased as punch to see you blogging again-having spent the morning himself writing for that other blog.

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3. ED! “no less an AUTHOR”

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4. Hi Anna, good to see you blogging again and you sound better now. Must try and have a look at that programme, my era too though not quite as adventurous as some. Take care.
   Love
   Carol x

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5. I’m searching for spellchecker….

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6. It really is worth it – quite fascinating.

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7. How about Kenneth Clark’s ‘Civilisation’, currently on iPlayer? Alternatively you could enjoy the best of both worlds and watch the assorted wildlife while enjoying a radio programme; Radio 4’s recent ‘Pygmalion’ might be a good place to start, though I hesitate to recommend something so lightweight when you are clearly in serious intellectual mode.

   (As an aside, if you permit a small amount of pedantry, I think you mean ‘The Doors of Perception’ – your version suggests you’ve spent rather too much time recently discussing carpentry with the excellent Mr G.)

   It’s great to read another of your pieces anyway; I was beginning to think I’d have to start a twitter account to send you greetings and best wishes and I really don’t think I am brave enough for that!

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8. I remember the 60s well. It was like any other decade — you get up on Monday morning and go to work.

   All that flower power and stuff involved only a small minority of people. I was busy teaching Biology, and then doing cancer research (badly). I learned a lot, as in every other decade.

   Wonderful to see a new blog post. Keep at it. Never mind the spelling and grammar — whoever edits your Collected Writings (6 Vols, hard cover, £80 per volume) can tidy up. ?

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9. The first biography I ever read was “No one here gets out alive” (Jim Morrison) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/691520.No_One_Here_Gets_Out_Alive. I was about 14/15 – terrific read, so yes, I did know about “The Doors of Perception”

   That led me into much reading/research into the ‘Peace Movement’, which some believe was created by Crowley. Do you know why Crowley is found in The Sgt Peppers’ album?

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10. Happy to comment, be associated with you etc..I see you as a seeker of truth, and have never understood intrigue or trolling. Asperger’s does have its positives then I guess!

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11. Still reading. Please keep on writing!

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12. Gosh …..Actually Golly Gosh …..Anna.
    Unaware you were still with us till for some unknown reason on a sunny Sussex afternoon I thought of googling you and traced you to your old licenced premises (via the website of that short one of the flatlands) which I see has reopened one again though for the moment with a smaller clientele.
    Not sure of what all the nastiness you speak of is all about since when you ceased blogging which coincided with me no longer being quite so tied to my computer I haven’t troubled much with bloggers ….but…but….but ….time to put you on favourites again and pick up on worthwhile topics to make me think.
    Interesting you have picked up on the hippy era …..and unsurprising ( to me at least) that the Blocked Dwarf has knowledge of the Wandervogel movement that started it all. Like most things nowadays (Savile and much else in modern life) its about tut tuting before returning to ‘entertainment’ rather than actually understanding something starting with its history.

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13. @FS, very glad to see you found your way here, Steve. But I should point that you probably stumbled across Grandad’s blog not my own (my own , now defunct, is blockeddwarf.blogspot.com) -he kindly lets me post the odd brainfart or two, especially if it is raccoon centric, and that also I wouldn’t claim to ‘have knowledge’ of the Wandervogel. It has always interested me that a Victorian ‘free spirit’ movement could give rise to both the hippies and the nazis….there is something just deliciously Germanic about that.

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14. @Blocked Dwarf
    Haven’t wandered the web much since Anna went silent in December and for someone who is slow at the best of times in the cyber world I couldn’t work out why you seemed to have moved to Ireland so thanks for the explanation.
    You are on the button as you have been many a time in the past about Germanic culture……so often ‘pure’ notions that morph and remorph into something so different than the original idea. The Wandervogel movement had many spin offs as I understand it ….perhaps unsurprising if one thinks about it …..an individual asiration for freedom but no real blue print how an individual can manifest that fredom …..a gift to all manner of charlatans not unlike happy clappy Cristianity.
    No criticism of Germanic culture by me …..quite the contrary and I pray in aid that I have just returned from three days in Budapest for the sole purpose of watching a performance of Wagners Parzival and had time permitted I would have stayed this week to watch the Ring Cycle which is performed annually in Budapest and which I have attended previously. No claim by me to be cultured but an admission that at least I try to aspire to be
    To me its fascinating that it was only Germanic Culture that seemed to formulate any sort of response (particularly philosophic) to 19th century urbanisation and industrialisation……I still see it now in more simple terms when travelling in Southern Germany and Switzerland where on the week end people take to the countryside rather than sitting in front of their electronic icons to worship their modern gods of the market place mainly football and celebrity as I seem to understand it.
    Even more fascinating and paradoxical is that those areas are amongst the most prosperous in Europe …..and to me the most civilised and courteous though of late I have noticed (to me an understandable) lack of patience and distrust of those from less ‘conservative’ cultures

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15. Hi Anna, glad to see you back writing on the blog once again, great to see The Blocked Dwarf commenting too..looked forward to reading the old blog and all the great comments… hope you are having a good day..much love Carole x

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16. Glad the comments are working – I was wondering what was up…
    Thanks for the Hippie TV links, shall watch with interest (hope this doesn’t mean that my aging hippie friends are ALL EVIL).
    BTW: was up Norfolk yesterday (bike club do). Seemed pretty “normal” to me.
    And so, with all that, did you win the election? What were the scores?

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17. I was wondering about the election, too. Being out of the U.K. loop for so long I have difficulty keeping up with the ins and outs. It’d be interesting to see an analysis of your impact on the other parties.

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18. The Doors and LSD gave my wife and I one help of a night in the bedroom once. The Doors Greatest Hits CD was playing and we had both had taken an acid blotter. The music carried our minds to a whole myriad of different worlds while we fell in and out of making love. It was a truly wondrous night and one I shall never forget.

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19. Aleister Crowley and Aldous Huxley in San Francisco, gettig together with the Yippies, hippies and Diggers in the Summer of Love? Huxley died in 1963 and Crowley passed in 1947 (in Hastings, of all places), so that must have been some pretty powerful LSD!
    In reply to mrjnh – No, Crowley had nothing to do with the ‘Peace Movement’; I rather think he would have disapproved of the hippies and their soft ways and their cannabis (his drug of choice was heroin, I believe). His writings became very popular in the 1960s; it was Lennon who wanted him on the cover, having apparently just read quite a lot by and about the old showman.

    Lovely to see you back writing, Anna!

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20. “Huxley died in 1963 and Crowley passed in 1947 (in Hastings, of all places), so that must have been some pretty powerful LSD!”

    Thank you for pointing that out ….but you do realise you have just condemned poor old Mr.G to a morning of putting up with the AR in a foul temper? She HATES getting her facts wrong-to the extent it actually causes her physical pain, I think. She’ll be distraught at not having picked up on the dates.

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21. Sorry Val – I wasn’t taking notes and just wrote from memory – I really just wanted you all to watch the programme. I think the gist of it was that Huxley and Crowley were an early influence on the people who later formed the ‘meeting of the three tribes festival’ I was just interested in how Huxley’s writing which encompassed a mistrust of the establishment, Crowley’s which encompassed satanic practices, and radical left politics with their demands for free love and more more equality between the sexes had passed down through the generations to perhaps form our present view that figures from the 60s and 70s were preying on young girls and boys, possibly via satanic practices, and that the mistrusted establishment might be to blame.
    I’m still sleepy this morning, so shall attempt to sleep it off and see if I can’t write something more intelligent this afternoon. The nighttime medication is pretty heavy duty, os takes a while to wear off.

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22. Blocked from using iPlayer by location, and I’ve forgotten the workaround (which probaby no longer works anyway) so I’ll have to use my imagination.
    Weren’t the Yippies an Abbie Hoffman ‘thing’? I must still have a copy of ‘Steal This Book’ in storage somewhere, some unfortunate family member unwittingly harbouring ‘terrorist training material’…

    I didn’t steal it of course – I bought it in an American bookshop decades ago.
    Goggle-eyed, I was, amazed at what the First Amendment let ’em get away with! Poor ol’ Abbie took his own life (disputed by some), disillusioned (disputed by some) with the lack of revolutionary spirit in Reagan’s USA (disputed by none). He should have stuck around as his book’s top tips on the best way to stab a copper are finally, it would seem, being taken up by some – way to go, Abbie!

    The Doors were one band I could never bring myself to love, though they were undoubtedly different & talented. Around about the time of picking up the above tome I’d have been off to the pictures to see Oliver North’s biopic. I was more interested in Billy ‘Billy’ Idol’s foray into acting than anything else; I think he was given but a single line which for some odd reason I still recall: “Fahk yoo, Ray!” Then someone wet themselves at the bar or summat. I was rapidly having second thoughts about the sixties – a decade I’d missed out on – being quite the magic time I’d been led to believe.

    Crowley? As a kid I’d flit from one thing to the next, trying to find my way by scribbling a swastika on a notebook cover one week only to be replaced by a ‘CND sign’ the next. I blame the magazine ‘The Unexplained’ and Arthur C. Clarke (& his ‘Mysterious World)’ for any interest shown in such spookiness. A very aloof girl at school once lent me a copy of Al’s ‘Bumper Boock Of Spells’ but I recall being disappointed as she really should have chucked it in the fireplace after reading.

    One Sunday afternoon – aargh!, Sunday afternoons! – the ‘grandmother who never seemed to speak’ was immobile in an armchair, innocently annoying me with her bloody silence, so I went to my bedroom to use those devilish new powers to cause her to spill her tea! It was a test to see if anything would happen. I returned downstairs to see her cup still stubbornly balanced, but sometime within the next thirty minutes she did, indeed, spill a bit of tea. I felt like a shit but didn’t really think I’d caused it.

    My days (er, ‘day’) as a satanoid came to an end. Some of the book was what I later came to realise was just yer bog-standard meditation/visualization technique. How to clear the mind of extraneous thoughts? Picture a conveyor belt carrying them into oblivion as and when they arise. Er, trouble was Bruce bloody Forsyth kept appearing to interject inanities in the subconscious – that beast!

    A week or so ago here I caught a tiny bit of a documentary on the Charles Manson/Beach Boys connection. (Just had a look and it was a French production about the USA on Spanish television… can’t find a copy, but this looks pretty much the same:

    I love The Beach Boys, and it’s hard to imagine a more chalk ‘n’ cheesy combination than their harmonizing on material pilfered from Manson. Fascinating story.

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23. (That should be Oliver Stone, NOT Oliver North!!!)

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24. Olive North worked quite well under the circumstances……!

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25. What shall I write about today? Hmmn. Am watching a documentary on the outback in Australia – I think that might figure in it. I was in Australia in 1975. Sleep first.

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26. ” I blame the magazine ‘The Unexplained’”-Bandini

    As do I. I even had the bloody binder…mind you, the lessons from The Unexplained came in handy when X-Files came along later. After The Unexplained I subscribed to ‘Amateur Winemaker’. Yes I was a very confused child.

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27. Today’s useless fact, the book being read by Stan Lee in the film Doctor Strange was The doors of perception (which if you’ve ever seen the art work in the comics makes perfect sense)

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28. Anna
    If your attention hasn’t wandered on to more edifying periods of history than the 60s try this by no means bad deconstruction of the era

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29. Hiya. Glad to hear of the life and death battles of nature going on but as I only know what I know, has there ever been a revolution where the working classes rose up without being led by somekind of higher class leader. Just genuine workers overthrowing the establishment. I don’t know that and would be interested. Can baby rabbits kill the hawk? Glad to see you writing though.

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30. Hello Again 2.0 Anna–found this link on another blog.

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31. Good to see you Mr Ecks – am going to try to write somethng else this afternoon – stay posted!

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32. Thank you Sommelier. Good to see you too. I thought that was an interesting point that is takes an uprising of the middle classes to get a revolution going – not the working classes! So much for ‘up the workers’!

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33. That certainly seems to be the case historically as in the French and Russian revolutions and was true in the Iranian revolution when I was there. I think poor working people were too busy trying to survive to ferment revolution and, given the way they turned out, it might have been better if they had not happened as the poor and workers didn’t get any better off, just gained a new sort of elite.

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34. Channel 4 did a documentary on Crowley as part of a series on docus about controversial figures around 15 years ago.

    I think it should be on YouTube

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35. ‘The Doors (of Perception)’, whether of Jim Morrison or Aldous Huxley, is taken from a poem by William Blake. The full quotation reads: ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.’

    As I understand it, Huxley pinched the reference for a short book describing his experiences with mescaline, and Jim Morrison, in turn, pinched it from Huxley.

    While I am here, Mrs. R., lovely to see you back. I have, sort of, been following you around the internet – the short-lived comeback tour version of the website – I had just finished posting three beautifully written posts, when the whole website disappeared (again) – then a rather unsatisfactory experience on ‘Twitter’ – the only sensible thing that David Cameron said was that many a twit makes a twat – and now here. I hope you are home, both physically and virtually, as it gets difficult following you around.

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36. I haven’t enjoyed my tour round the Internet, it has been more than confusing. I shan’t be moving from here though. Thank you for your patience and good to see you.