Week 16 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

Maria Miller

            When I learned that Prime Minister David Cameron was giving his full support to Ms Maria Miller in her defence of her job as Culture Minister, despite clamour from the press and some MPs for her resignation, I wondered if it might be the kiss of death.  She wouldn’t be the first to have been forced into resignation within days of the Prime Minister offering similar support.  Her case had been considered by the independent Commissioner appointed to investigate alleged fraudulent claims for expenses by some MPs.  He had ruled that there was no evidence of deliberate fraud but that she should apologise to the House of Commons and pay back £46,000 that she had been paid to her but to which she hadn’t been entitled.  He also commented that she had been less than co-operative during the course of the investigation.

            It was though, not the commissioner but the Parliamentary Standards Committee consisting of fellow-MPs, who made the final decision.   They agreed that Mrs Miller should make a public apology but they reduced the amount she would have to repay  from £46.000 to just over £5,000!   Isn’t it the members of that committee rather than Ms Miller who should have been considering resignation!

            It was this remarkable reduction in the sum that Ms. Miller had to pay back, plus her very half-hearted and perfunctory apology to the House of Commons, that caused the outcry – not least from members of her own Conservative Party – and ultimately led to her resignation from her Cabinet post.

            My interest in the case is that it draws attention, once again, to the very different standard of behaviour expected of MPs of all political persuasions, and that of other professional servants of the public in central and local government, and the very different code of discipline that rules their behaviour. I know very little about the Civil Service but I do know that local government employees who had been revealed to have fiddled expenses or claimed allowances to which they were not entitled, to the extent of thousands of pounds, would be lucky if their penalty was only the loss of their job – more likely they would be prosecuted, face a possible prison sentence, the loss of their pension entitlement and the probability that they would never work again in a responsible job.  They would certainly never have been given the soft option of returning the money they had fraudulently obtained and making an apology.  How nice it must be to be able to do as Mr Cameron suggested, and ‘draw a line under the past’.  No doubt every arrested burglar, confidence trickster and rapist would like the same! Why shouldn’t erring MPs be treated exactly the same as erring civil servants and local government officials?

How about genuine mistakes and misunderstandings?  For goodness sake!  MPs make the laws that we have to obey.  We can surely expect them to understand their own rules – and to know the difference between right and wrong!  How strange that ‘mistakes and misunderstandings’ are always in one direction.  Has there ever been a case of an MP accidentally or mistakenly paying a substantial un-owed sum of money back to the government?

A Not-Unhappy Ending

            Those who have been concerned about Ms. Miller’s financial situation now that she is no longer a Minister of the Crown will be relieved to know that I have just heard on the tv news that as a former member of the Cabinet she’ll get a £70,000 golden handshake on her departure

Suffering from Depression?   Or just depressed?

Almost every week we get new, and often conflicting ‘health advice’ or ‘health warnings’ from this, that or the other ‘expert’, on the front pages of the popular press.  Any alcohol intake is harmful. A glass of red wine every day will guard against heart disease and will halt the progress of macular degeneration of the retina of the eye. All smoking is harmful and inadvertently inhaling some-one else’s second-hand smoke is no less dangerous. The whole nation is suffering from obesity as a result of eating too much and exercising too little.  Eat too little and you’ll become anorexic. Over-exercise could give you a stroke or a heart attack.  Try to eat at least five portions of fruit or vegetables every day. Eat more fruit or vegetables every day – seven is better than five and vegetables are better than fruit!

The latest health scare – though it claims to be stating a fact rather than issuing a warning – is that most elderly people are suffering from depression and that the NHS ought to do something about it.  Well, I am 92 and, God willing, I shall be 93 in about six weeks time. I just don’t believe that many of my contemporaries are suffering from clinical depression. Depression is a serious and very unpleasant mental illness.  Some years ago I was acquainted with someone with what we then called manic-depression (now I believe bi-polar disorder is the pc expression). When that person was in her depressive phase she was quite incapable of doing anything at all but sit and weep, totally convinced – whatever her actual circumstances at the time – that all the world was against her and that she faced a future of total misery.  Very unpleasant as it undoubtedly is - clinical depression is a definite medical condition that can be treated.

There may, for all I know, be some old people today like that – but I am sure they are a  small minority  Most of us oldies are depressed from time to time, but that’s not the same thing at all.  We are depressed because many of us have plenty to be depressed about.  Imagine what it must be like to be old, helpless and housebound, with no family left and few if any friends. You’re living on the state pension and any benefits you can get hold of.  You’ve really got nothing to do all day, no purpose in life, and you speak only to occasional tradesmen, perhaps to a welfare worker or a meals-on-wheels deliverer. To be depressed in such a situation is not a condition  that can be remedied by anything the NHS can offer. Goodness – anyone who isn’t depressed under those circumstances must surely be suffering from some other mental illness!

I’m glad to be able to say that my circumstances are not a bit like that.  I’ve a comfortable if modest home and an adequate income (when you’re in your nineties the opportunities for extravagant living become a little limited!)  I have concerned neighbours and reliable friends whom I see regularly.  No member of my family lives nearby and some live and work overseas – but I see some of them regularly and all are in touch by phone or email. I would be housebound if it were not for my electric mobility scooter (my ‘iron horse’) on which I visit local friends, do my shopping, and go to church and to our local Quaker Meeting.  I receive and answer emails, and I write this blog and try to publish it every week!   I think that, for a nonagenarian – I lead a pretty full life.

I know that I have a great deal to be thankful for.  I am sincerely grateful - but I can’t pretend that I don’t sometimes feel depressed and dispirited.  I miss my former physical strength and dexterity.  Every movement that I make is now an effort and everything I do takes three times as long as it once did. I can’t climb a step-ladder and stairs are very difficult for me.  It takes me a long time to cross a room to answer a phone or to go the front door for a caller.  I am clumsy.  I accidentally knock things onto the floor and find it increasingly difficult to pick them up again.  My short-term memory (particularly for people’s names) is bad and getting worse.   I’m truly grateful when people are extra kind and helpful towards me (as most people certainly are) but I resent my frailty that prompts their kindness!  In old age it really is more blessed to give than to receive.

I’m often told what a host of happy memories I must have to fall back on.   It’s true and, in the past I have enjoyed sharing them with my wife who featured in most of them.  Sadly her life came to an end nearly eight years ago – just three months after we had celebrated our 60^th wedding anniversary.  Now I find that it is the very happiest memories of the past that are most likely to bring tears to my eyes.

I don’t think that very many of us oldies suffer from clinical depression.   Most of us would much rather be known as ‘Cheerful Charlies’ rather than ‘Moaning Minnies’. Even those like me though, blessed with steadfast and caring friends and loving relatives, a purpose in life, and all the material things that we really need, are sometimes depressed. This is simply because living through very old age can be a depressing experience. There's no denying it and I really don't see what the NHS - or anyone else - can do about it!

Happy Easter!

Yesterday (13th April) was Palm Sunday, when Christians remember that Jesus Christ rode on a donkey in triumph into Jerusalem, cheered on by the same crowd that a few days later would be howling for his death.  Next weekend comes Good Friday when we remember his sham trial, torture and cruel execution – followed on Easter Sunday by his glorious return from death.  I sometimes lose patience (another symptom of old age perhaps!) with those, usually very well-meaning and reasonable people, who say, ‘Of course I’m sure that we should all try to follow the example and teaching of Jesus, but I really can’t accept all that supernatural stuff, and as for his return from the dead – I ask you!’

I prefer ‘miraculous’ to ‘supernatural’.  Jesus was brought up in a remote and insignificant part of the Roman Empire.  In early adult life he preached and healed the sick for no more than about two years.  He was then arrested, publicly humiliated and tortured to death by crucifixion – a word so familiar to us that we may not appreciate what a cruel and agonising method of execution a first-century crucifixion was.  Does anyone imagine that this unsuccessful preacher and healer, judicially murdered in his early thirties, would have featured even as a footnote in the pages of history, had not a handful of very ordinary down-to-earth people been quite convinced that he had walked with them, talked with them and shared meals with them, days after his cruel execution - and were prepared to die for that conviction?

Had there been no Resurrection there would have been no teaching to hear, no example to follow. Christ is risen!   He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

  

 

Week 22 2013

Tendring Topics……on line

‘God hears the embattled nations sing and shout –

‘Gott Straffe England!’ and ‘God save the King!’

God this, God that, and God the other thing!

‘Good God’, says God, ‘I’ve got my work cut out!

            This mildly irreverent rhyme was written by Sir John Squire, early twentieth century satirist, in 1916 the year of the Battle of the Somme in World War I.   ‘Gott straffe England! (God punish England!) was the refrain of a ‘Hymn of Hate’ widely – though not universally – popular in Germany during those war years. It declared England, rather than Russia or France, to be Germany’s principal foe   Both Britain and Germany were nominally Christian countries and both claimed God to be ‘on their side’.  Both armies had military padres to offer their troops spiritual comfort and perhaps to assure them that their cause was the one that had divine blessing and approval. Throughout World War II the belt buckle of every German soldier was inscribed with the words ‘Gott mit uns’ or ‘God with us’?

           The now virtually unknown words of the second verse of our National Anthem were once sung with gusto.   I remember them. They told God exactly what was expected of him!

O Lord our God arise!

Scatter her enemies, and make them fall.

Confound their politics, 

Frustrate their knavish tricks,

On thee our hopes we fix.

God save us all.

            This attitude persists today. The brutal murderers of that British soldier outside the army barracks in Woolwich last week declared the Muslim refrain Allah Akbar (God is Great) as they waited for martyrdom, or the opportunity for yet more killing, with the arrival of the police.  Every suicide bomber believes himself to be giving his own life as a worthy sacrifice to God if, at the same time, he manages to kill a few infidels.

            Nor is this attitude, if not its practice, completely eliminated among Christians.  Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was reported to have been outraged when Archbishop Runcie prayed for the Argentine as well as the British victims of the Falklands War.  Only last week correspondents to the local daily Gazette proclaimed that God had intervened on the side of the western allies in World War II – by calming the sea to enable the remnants of our army to escape via Dunkirk and, on at least one occasion, preventing enemy bombers from taking off to bomb England!  Can those correspondents possibly believe that God was supporting the British and American bomber crews who incinerated thousands of innocent civilians in the bombing raids on Dresden on 13^th and 14^th February 1945?

            The God revealed to us in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ is the loving father of all mankind.   To suggest that he wills any act of violence by one of his children against another is the ultimate blasphemy, the ‘unforgiveable sin’.  Jesus told his followers to love their enemies, bless those that curse them, and do good to those who are spiteful towards them.  To those who rummage through the Old Testament  for justification of this, that or the other act of violence, he said that the whole of the moral teaching of the Old Testament  is encapsulated in the one commandment, to treat other people as you would like them to treat you. I understand that other world religious faiths include the same or a similar injunction.

            Can you imagine Jesus Christ, as we know him from the four Gospels, giving his blessing to suicide bombers, improvised explosive devices, cluster bombs, land mines, unmanned drones controlled from a distant country assassinating those deemed to be enemies of that country, or submarines roaming the oceans armed with weapons capable of destroying whole cities? 

There will, I suppose, always be those who are so consumed with hatred,  fear or envy that they will resort to violence, or plan to resort to violence against their fellow men and women.  Those who do so should not delude themselves that their thoughts and actions have the approval of God!

Some Afterthoughts

          One of the men believed to be involved in the killing of that young soldier in Woolwich  told a bystander that he was hoping to ‘bring war onto the streets of Woolwich’.  Those who have attacked mosques and Islamic Centres in reprisal for the murder are behaving exactly as the murderers had hoped.  Almost equally stupid was our Prime Minister’s assertion that the actions of these cold-blooded murderers ‘had nothing to do with religion’.  Of course they were to do with religion – a false religion that most of us are quite prepared to accept is as contrary to the tenets of Islam as the reaction of those who attack Islamic centres is contrary to Christianity.

            However, when asked why the murder suspects had not been more closely watched by the security forces since their radical views were well-known, an official spokesman replied that there were thousands who held similar views and it was impossible to monitor them all.

             That I do consider a very alarming piece of information.

‘

Clacton’s ‘Benefit Ghettos’

          When my wife and I were house-hunting in Clacton for our small family way back in 1956 we quickly realised that we couldn’t afford to buy a home near to the seafront.  The properties  within a few minutes walk of the sea, mostly large Edwardian houses offering holiday accommodation during the summer months, were well beyond our means.  We settled for the modest bungalow in Dudley Road (once described in Clacton Town Hall’s Council Chamber as ‘working class residential’) where, fifty-seven years later, I am writing these words.

            How astonishing therefore to find that those once ‘posh’ roads near the seafront in Clacton’s Pier Ward are now a ‘Benefits Ghetto’ with a staggering fifty-four percent of residents living on state benefit.  It is claimed to have the fifth highest number of folk-on-benefit in the country. Even in the town’s Golf Green Ward which includes Jaywick, Britain’s most deprived area, only forty-eight percent of residents of working age are living on state benefits. Douglas Carswell, Clacton’s Conservative MP says that, ‘this just shows the need for welfare reform.  I don’t think that William Beveridge and Clement Attlee when setting up the welfare state all those years ago, wanted to see half the people living in Pier Ward to be living at someone else’s expense.  There are government changes coming in which will see people who are on jobseekers allowance expected to look for a job.  Frankly that hasn’t been happening.  People who are young and fit and able to work will be expected to work’.  Perhaps Mr Carswell can suggest where those job-seekers should look for work in an area where jobs are notoriously scarce and where there are at least a dozen applicants for every vacancy.

            William Beveridge and Clem Attlee, were they alive today, certainly wouldn’t have expected to see two and a half million unemployed in Britain sixty-five years after the end of World War II.   Clem Attlee would have been horrified at the way in which the aspirations of those who had fought and won the war have been treated with contempt by successive governments.  In particular he would have had difficulty in believing that after ten years of New Labour government the gap between the incomes of the richest and poorest in our land was wider than it had been at any time in the twentieth century.

            The fact is that the decline of Clacton as a holiday resort, largely as a result of cheap air travel, has meant that there is no longer the demand that there once was for boarding house holiday accommodation.  The owners of buildings that had been used for this purpose found that they could manage quite nicely by letting out single rooms cheaply all the year round as bed-sitters for those who could afford nothing better.  It became known that there is usually cheap bed-sit accommodation available in Clacton – and homeless and jobless people from all over the country found their way here; just another example of the functioning of 'market forces'.  

            Government Cuts in the public services and the attempt to persuade ‘the big society’ to do for nothing some of the tasks formerly undertaken by paid labour, have played their part in reducing the number of jobs available for both skilled and unskilled workers.  Public and private enterprises alike are cutting the number of their employees to the bare minimum – and below!  Recently I noticed that the Public Conveniences on Clacton Station were locked because of vandalism and misuse.  Those who needed to use the Convenience were advised to get a key from one of the station staff. They'll be lucky to find one!  It isn’t so long ago that the constant presence of uniformed station staff acted as a deterrent to miscreants of all kinds.  But Profitability, Productivity and Cost Effectiveness (the unholy trinity driving market forces!) demand that employees must be profitably occupied every minute of their working day. No wonder hospital emergency departments are unable to cope with the demand put upon them, public property is constantly vandalised, public buildings defaced by graffiti, litter blows about our streets, there are potholes in our roads and broken paving makes our pavements dangerous to pedestrians.

            In the coming months we can confidently expect even more refugees from the imposition of the Housing Benefit Ceiling and the Bedroom Tax in London, to arrive among us.  Many of them will hope, almost certainly in vain, to find work as well as cheap accommodation. A few will be content to exist on ‘benefit’.  It is about those that we’ll read in the tabloid press.  There is little point in castigating them.  They are the product of our wonderful ‘free market economy’ that encourages everybody  (billionaire tax-dodgers, Bank Executives with their bonuses and miss-sold insurances, money lenders, expenses fiddling Councillors, MPs and Noble Lords, slum landlords, loan sharks and, right at the bottom of the pile, lowly benefit scroungers), to grab as much as they can for as little as they can get away with.

  

  

           

             

           

            

Week 16.2011 19.4.2011

Tendring Topics……..on line


‘Thank Christ….for Easter!’

I don’t think that we would be particularly surprised if we saw that message on a Notice Board outside any church or place of worship this week. Yet that message, with the addition of ‘Bank Holiday’ after ‘Easter’ and accompanied by a caricature of a smiling and beckoning Christ, wearing ear phones, outside Tom Peppers pub on Clacton’s Marine Parade has caused outrage among many Christians, including the Bishop of Chelmsford.

Well, I have to confess that when I first saw it, I too felt outraged. Jesus Christ’s name was being used blasphemously and his image was being exploited to encourage irresponsible boozing! Disgraceful. But was it? A chat with friends wiser than I am and with a Christian faith firmer than mine, made me begin to think otherwise.

The poster did at least acknowledge that Jesus Christ had something to do with Easter. The further, admittedly tasteless, advertisement for a vodka drink to bring yourself back to life even suggests that the author of the advert was acquainted with the fact of Christ’s resurrection.

A couple of pages after the report of this ‘outrageous’ poster and the Christian reaction to it, the same Clacton Gazette had nine pages of Easter Extra full of adverts for Easter activities and commercial services. There were advertising features extolling the attractions of Clacton and Holland-on-Sea over the Easter holiday, the beauty of the nearby bluebell woods, and so on (I have written advertising features like that myself in my time!) but not a single word about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Nor was there even a whisper of the possibility that going to church to ‘thank Christ for Easter’ was among the ‘Things to do in Clacton at Easter’.


I reckon that fundamentalist atheists like, for instance, Professor Dawkins, who are always eager to spread their unbelief, would derive far more satisfaction from those nine pages of Easter Extra that studiously avoided any connection between Easter and the Christian Faith, than from the poster that, however crudely, brought the reality and importance of the Easter story to the attention of us all.

An insult to Jesus to suggest that he had anything to do with pubs and the kind of people who use them? Hardly; tradition asserts that he was born in a stable at the back of an inn. He was, so he told us himself, accused of being ‘a glutton and a wine bibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners’. The God whom Jesus revealed to us does not tell his followers to seek out and punish those who insult him. On that first Good Friday Jesus was subjected to far more abuse, insult and wanton cruelty than the rest of us have to endure in a lifetime. His reaction was to pray: ‘Forgive them Father. They don’t realize what they are doing’.

I think that Christians should thank the landlord of ‘Tom Peppers’ for having, however inadvertently, brought the true story of Easter to the front page of a local newspaper that would otherwise have ignored it.

Nursing care?

Some weeks ago I mentioned in this blog my late wife Heather’s brief and unhappy stay in the Kate Grant Ward of Clacton Hospital in 2004. She had fallen, broken a hip and had had it repaired at Colchester General Hospital. She had then been sent to Clacton Hospital for rehabilitation. I had known at about the time her ambulance would arrive there and, when it arrived, I had my introduction to the situation that prevailed there!

The ambulance driver pushed her, in a wheel chair, into the Kate Grant Ward and up to the empty bed prepared for her. There were no nurses there to receive her and get her into the bed. After waiting for about ten minutes the driver said, ‘I’m not supposed to do this, but I can’t leave her sitting in that wheel chair after that long drive. I’m going to get her onto the bed’. And so he did. He was strong and my wife was very light so it was no problem. Eventually of course a couple of nurses did turn up, very kind and helpful, and she was properly admitted.

That summed up all her subsequent treatment. The nurses were kind, hard working and thoroughly professional – but there were not enough of them. With a ward full of more-or-less immobile elderly ladies there was almost always at least one of them needing urgent attention and often more than one. The result was that it took well over an hour to get them settled at night and even longer to get them up, washed, dressed and ready to sit in their bedside chairs, in the morning. Alarm bells often went unanswered and patients were catheterised (and became permanently incontinent as a result) simply because it avoided the need to supply a bottle or bedpan, or to help the patient to the toilet. It was a great relief when I managed to persuade the Ward Sister that I was well able to care for my wife myself at home, and we bade the Kate Grant Ward farewell.

My wife’s experience pales into insignificance compared with that reported of Carol Carr of Dovercourt. She is a sufferer from Multiple Schlerosis and has paralysis down one side of her body. She was admitted to Colchester General Hospital with a persistent urinary tract infection. A report in the local Daily Gazette records that, ‘Her husband Dennis said she was left initially without food and drink for eight hours while waiting in the admissions area. Once properly admitted to hospital, he claims his wife was left lying in her own faeces for more than six hours’.


Mr Carr says, ‘The conditions in that hospital were atrocious. My wife’s carer and myself found ourselves having to do stuff for elderly patients. Bells were going off and being ignored. It’s so infuriating to sit there and watch this going on. To have it happen to a member of your own family is appalling……..there are good people there, good nurses. But they just don’t have sufficient staff’.


Mr and Mrs Carr have made an official complaint that is being looked into as a matter of urgency by the hospital authorities. Whatever the outcome of that enquiry though it is obvious to me though that there is an acute shortage of nurses ‘in the front line’, a shortage that I had noted in Clacton seven years earlier

And now it seems, Government cuts mean that there will be even less of them!

My own ‘Close encounter’ with the NHS


I was sorry to hear of Mrs Carr’s experience of the NHS and of Colchester General Hospital because, almost at the same time perhaps, I was having a wholly different and, for the most part, wholly positive experience of both.

I had been seeing my own doctor about what seemed to be a problem with my digestive system for a week or so. Then I had a very troubled night, perspiring freely and shivering at the same time. In the morning I was still trembling and shaking. Had I not been living alone I might have decided otherwise but I thought that by dialling 999 I would at least get the immediate attention of a paramedic.

And so I did. A pleasant and helpful young man turned up and examined me. He was very concerned to find that my blood pressure which, when taken on one arm was wildly different from one taken on the other. He seemed to think that that was a sign of imminent peril. He phoned for an ambulance and helped me to get dressed, urging me to do everything very, very slowly and carefully.

He must I think, have conveyed his worries about my condition to Colchester General Hospital, because when I got there I was dealt with instantly with no waiting at all. For the next hour my body wasn’t my own. A nurse helped me into one of those awful hospital gowns, I gave blood and urine samples for examination. In a hospital ‘cot’, I was electrocardiographed, my chest and my abdomen were X-rayed separately and, as I was stretched out on an ‘operating’ table, my stomach was prodded and very thoroughly examined by the Registrar.

Back in my ‘cot’, I was pushed into a cubicle to await my fate. After, I suppose, about three quarters of an hour the Registrar (a helpful and friendly young woman) turned up. She told me that those tests had revealed that I had a very severe urinary infection. It could be successfully treated with antibiotics and I could take them as satisfactorily at home as in hospital. I could get dressed and go home.

As I was about to ask her how I was going to get home, the curtain to the cubicle was pulled aside, and in walked my younger son Andy who lives in Enfield.  A friendly neighbour had spotted me being carried off in an ambulance and had phoned him. He had driven down right away and had turned up just in time to drive me home in comfort.

No negative experiences at all? Well, just one. It sounds pretty trivial now – but it didn’t at the time. While waiting in the cubicle I developed an urge to visit the toilet. There seemed to be no way of summoning a nurse so, in desperation, I told someone passing outside the cubicle of my need and asked them if they could ask a nurse to give me urgent attention. I had hoped, I suppose, that the nurse would let down the side of my ‘cot’ so that I could get out, and direct me to the nearest toilet. With my stick I would have been well able to get there on my own.

What actually happened was that, after another seemingly interminable wait, a nurse walked in with one of those (paper maché ?) hospital urine bottles, thrust it over the part of my anatomy that needed it, and walked out again. It was, I suppose, an adequate response, but hardly the one for which I had hoped. However, I came to no harm and it did confirm my conviction that many more nurses are needed ‘on the front line!’

The World’s Best! – and it’s all free?


Politicians, of all political persuasions, constantly assure us that they are determined that our Health Service should remain ‘the best in the world’ and will continue to be ‘free at the point of delivery’. If they say it often enough without thinking about it, they’ll probably believe it themselves!

It certainly isn’t free at the point of delivery – unless you consider that dentistry, optical services and actually obtaining the drugs that the doctor prescribes are not part of the Health Service. I don’t have to pay for prescribed medicines because of my age. Many others are also exempt for one reason or another but for those who have to pay (as I did before I reached retirement age) the charge is now over £7.00 per item!

Is our Health Service ‘the best in the world’? I had always imagined that it was at least among the top half dozen. Lately though I have begun to wonder. My grandson, who lives and works in Brussels (The rule that gives all EU citizens the right to live and work anywhere with the EU doesn’t just benefit those who want to come to England!) is very enthusiastic about the service that he enjoys in Belgium.
 And why do so many people needing hip replacement and similar surgery opt to go to France or elsewhere to have it done?

Infant mortality, including the incidence of stillbirths, is generally reckoned to be a pretty good indicator of the general health of a community. I was shocked to learn that Britain has more stillbirths per every one-thousand births than practically any other developed country in the world.

There can be few situations more heart-rending than the birth of a stillborn child. The birth has been anticipated for months – pram, cot, baby clothes have all been lovingly prepared. Messages of congratulation have been arriving – and the baby dies before birth. I am sure that only those who have had the experience can imagine the disappointment, despair and desolation of the bereaved mum and dad. If there were only one, per million live births, it would be one too many.

I don’t know why we have more stillbirths than almost every other developed country but, if I were a betting man, I would be prepared to wager that those countries with a lower stillbirth rate than us, have:

(a) A much narrower gap between the incomes of their poorest and wealthiest citizens than we have.
(b) Many more trained, qualified and working nurses and midwives per head of the population than we have.