As the NHS reaches breaking point, it must be kept in public hands.

After careful consideration whether to resume this blog after the recent sad loss of my partner, I have decided to continue, I believe it is what the dear one would have wanted. This post then dedicated to her memory.The NHS served her well.
Ever since 1948 the National Health Service has been the envy of the world. It is the greatest contribution towards social and health equality. The NHS is an example of how a caring society can create good and safe care based on social solidarity. The NHS is the best way to ensure fair access to treatment for the acute or long-term sick, and those with complex or costly health needs, irrespective of their ability to pay.
But if the NHS was a car dashboard, every single warning light would be flashing at the moment after  more than 20 NHS trusts across England declared black alerts in the last week, meaning they can no longer guarantee patient safety. Even here in Wales, where the issue is devolved,Labour's 'modernisation' of the NHS in Wales in the Welsh assembly has led to the downgrading of maternity units, A&E departments and the loss of 2,000 hospital beds. This means reduced access to health care for many in Wales, especially for those without a car, the elderly, disabled people and some of the poorest communities with the furthest to travel. Staff working on the frontlines are feeling the impact, leaving many demoralised and combined with a neglect in funding, this has led to the neglect of people. All across social media, we can hear daily live reports from front line NHS staff struggling to save lives in the face of the government’s reckless under-funding and under-resourcing of the service.Because of this the system isn't at breaking point, it's actually beyond that.As the chairman of  the BMA ( British Medical Association), Mark Porter, recently said: “The intervention from the Red Cross highlights the enormous pressure the NHS is facing as conditions in hospitals across the country are reaching a dangerous level. The government should be ashamed that it has got the point where volunteers have been necessary to ease the burden.”
But how does the Government in westminster under Theresa May respond to this tragic situation, well  as per bloody usual  they simply use the 'blame' game to shed their own responsibility, and as every day goes by it becomes clearer  that Theresa May and co have no flipping idea how to respond  adequately to the present crisis. The 'crisis' in the NHS is not the fault of A&E departments,patients lazy GP practices or incompetent Nurses, it is an entirely manufactured crisis that has resulted in unnecessary pain, suffering and even death, and is what happens when you under-fund a service, increase workloads to breaking point, refuse to meet ever increasing demand, make people spend more time doing paperwork than they actually spend face to face with patients, make training harder and harder to get in to and make roles post training so unattractive that nobody wants to do them.This combined with creeping privatisation by the Conservatives by stealth of health services over recent years has led to the pursuit of profit being introduced to this cherished institution despite the repeated failures and costs of private provision.
There is also a shortage of 20,000 NHS nurses. Pressure on staff means tired health workers, threatening patient safety, and instead of helping to recruit more the Tories have scrapped bursaries for student nurses, making them pay for their training!The workload remains constant and extreme. Missing food for a whole shift 10 hour is not uncommon, nor is finishing 2-3 hours late.Newly qualified junior doctors look after up to 100 patients the end result unable to provide  proper care to each individual.One in ten hospital beds are occupied by patients who can't be released because of cuts to social care. This means operations are cancelled, causing patients to be seen in private hospitals, costing the NHS. 
Theresa May's demands for yet more austerity in the NHS represent a real risk to the safety of patients and the service. The Governments latest plans for Sustainability and Transformation plans are in  in reality just a smokescreen for further cuts and it's latest instrument of privatisation.
Doctors up and down the country are bloody angry too with the Prime Minister's demands to open seven days a week, with some claiming they will quit the health service alltogether.Anyway there are simply not enough  GP's in the UK to enable this that could guarantee peoples safety.The Royal College of General Practitioners says 600 practices - with 75% of GPs in these aged over 55 - are at risk of closure by 2020. This will result in a shortage of 10,000 GPs in the next four years.Yet patients are already struggling to get appointments. Many end up in hospital A&E departments, suffering long waits,this I fear is only going to get worse.
Despite all this terrible news I can reliably report that the caring spirit is still well and truly alive throughout the NHS.After my loved one and my father were both admitted to hospital recently, all I ever witnessed were NHS staff  working beyond the call of duty with such dedication, despite all the pressures and obstacles placed in their way.
I passionately believe, that in this time of crisis, the NHS must remain a publicly funded service, free at the point of need and accountable to us the tax payer.  Theresa May simply cannot be trusted  with it.The NHS is the single greatest achievement of working class people. We cannot  simply sit by and allow it to be undermined and ultimately destroyed. Please consider signing the following two  petitions and share. Our NHS is not for sale and must be kept in public hands.

Petition- NHS Privatisation.

http://www.nhs-needs-cpr.co.uk/

The NHS must never be privatised and remain a free, publicly funded UK service.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/174321
.
Join the NHS demo on 4th March to show the Government that their are still folk with the faith to fight for it.

 

Jane the mighty furbster's funeral arrangements

Jane Elizabeh Husband  my beautiful partner of Seabrook House, Cwmins, St Dogmaels who  passed away peacefully att her home on Sunday January 8th, 2017 aged 56 years, funeral will be held at Narberth Crematorium on Thursday 19th January at 11.30am. Family Flowers only, Donations instead to Paul Sartori

Enquiries  to Colin Phillips and Daughters Funeral Directors.

Cardigan : Tel: 01239 621192

For the mighty furbster , Jane Elizabeth Husband (9/5/60 - 8/1/17) - Flower of Grace

This is the most difficult post I've ever written, probably one of my shortest, but  it is with great sadness I must release the news  that my lover and partner,the blessed  mighty furbster Jane Husband has passed  away after a long courageous  battle with cancer.
This beautiful musician, gardener, book lover, music aficionada,peace campaigner, nature loving, feline admirer, friend of social justice, touched the hearts and minds of many, with her love, compassion and understanding.Never passive though, carried so much strength, ... cheers to her mum and dad and reg the crow.
May this star forever shine brightly, her light forever remains.This wonderful , beautiful spirit, captured entirely what is good about humanity. RIP dearest beloved Jane thank you so much for sharing your love. xxxx

RIP dearest beloved Jane.

Flower of Grace


Thank you kindly, farewell beloved

 on every morning of the future

 we  will feel your  spirit

and know that you will understand

as you sit there on your cloud

watching gardens  below  bloom again  

the seasons  will thank you

your beauty will never dim

words ever clear, vision bright

as we continue to fight through life

remembering all the happy times we shared

my thinking will be warmed

by thoughts  of a rare beauty

in peace and total harmony.

Love you, Dave Rendle, teifidancer, Aberteifi/Cardigan, 9/1/17

Harrods: stop stealing your waiters tips

One of the worlds wealthiest stores was the scene of protest yesterday in a row over tips.
Workers at Harrod's 16  restaurants claim department store bosses keep up to 75 percent of the service charge on each bill. They say the current system means staff are missing out on up to £5,000 a year.
Between 50 and 100 demonstrators led by the union United Voices of the World, which represents some of the west London store’s waiters and kitchen staff, brought Brompton Road almost to a standstill blocking doorways and roads and setting off smoke bombs at Harrods in protest against the store's policy of stealing workers tips collected at its cafes and restaurants.Furious protesters also chanted and slipped notes into pockets, bags and boxes of goods being sold in the store.Campaigners also held up banners which read: “Stop stealing our tips” and “Harrods tips are not for profit”.It led to two  people being subsequently arrested.

 

 
Mr Petros Elia, UVW general secretary, says “Harrods is showing complete disdain for its low paid staff while profiting off their backs.” Staff are rightly angry that, despite the fact that the store has registered massive, record-breaking profits and its owners, the Qatari royal family, have paid themselves a whopping £100 million dividend, they’ve seen their share of the service charge go down.”

Elia also points out that most diners assume their tips are a reward for good service. “Harrods is also exploiting the good will of its customers, most of whom will logically assume that their tips go to waiters and kitchen staff.”

“Taking away any percentage of the service charge, which customers think is going to the waiters, is unacceptable. Taking up to 75% is an utter disgrace. “

That 75% means that every year the Qatari royal family, which owns Harrods, is taking up to £5,000 worth of tips from every chef, waiter and porter. Famous worldwide Harrods, had record profits in 2016 of £168m. There is no excuse for Harrods, (not the only ones in the hospitality industry incidentally that carry out this practice.) to keep any of the service charge for themselves.
It is about time that this practice of keeping part or hole tips and service charges is outlawed, as the staff are underpaid, robbed and the guests are lied to. Justice to all those working in hospitality industry currently being ripped off and Harrods stop stealing your waiters tips.

Idris Davies (6/1/1905- 6/4/53) -The heart of a dreamer/ Love Lasts Longer

Here are two poems from the pen of one of my favourite poets Idris Davies, who was born on this day, January 6th 1905, in Rhymney. His writings in English and Welsh reflected the idealism and protest of people during a time of great economic, social religious change. In books like The Angry Summer and Gwalia Deserta, Idris Davies did more than just write poetry, he captured the essential dignity of the working man and woman. No other writer has ever come close to expressing the sadness and the depression of the Welsh valleys at that particular moment in time.
Many of his poems were full of anger and rage that release his strong socialist faith, but was more than capable of releasing poems of great  tenderness and comfort as the following two examples prove. Enjoy.
I have written about him in a little bit more detail here earlier, he remains a huge influence on me  :- Idris Davies -Poet of the people

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/idris-davies-poet-of-people.html 

From The Collected Poems of Idris Davies, edited by Islwyn Jenkins, published by Gwasg Gomer., 1972

THE HEART OF A DREAMER

 I broke my heart in five pieces
And buried a part by the sea
And I hid a part in the mountains
And the third in the root of a tree,
And the fourth I gave to a singer
Who share his wild ecstasy,
But the best I gave to a woman
Who gave all her heart to me.

LOVE LASTS LONGER

Love lasts longer than the roses,
Love is warmer than the wine,
Love is wilder than the whirlwind,
        And O that love were mine !

Love is older than the mountains,
Love is fresher than the ides,
Love is sweeter than the lilies,
      And O that love were mine!

Love is stronger than the granite,
Love is gentler than a sigh,
Love is richer than the rubies,
     And O that love were mine!

Love lasts longer than the roses,
     And O that love were mine...

1937

Know Hope: Life after death in Palestine: crowdfund appeal for new film

“After years on Israel’s most wanted list, a Palestinian militant leader renounces violence for cultural resistance. His losses are great but his hopes are greater.”

Know Hope is a planned  documentary on Zakaria Zubede former head of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade who gave up armed struggle against Israeli occupation and helped to found a theater company–The Freedom Theatre in Jenin. Zakaria was once the most wanted man is Israel for his part in resisting the occupation during the second Palestinian uprising.  In 2007 however, he renounced militancy for Israeli amnesty, committing himself solely to cultural resistance and soon became one of the symbols for the cultural movement in Palestine.  This fact has made him a continued target, not just from Israel but from the Palestinian Authority as well.
It will be an important documentary in highlighting the Palestinian plight, about elemental issues of self determination, of the desire for peace, and the never ending search for a resolution to the situation. This complex story follows Zakaria  who's life embodies the tragedy and the paradox of the Occupation, he represents their past and is hopeful for their future. He wants peace with Israel, but  peace cannot come without freedom; this must come before the other. He no longer puts his hope in a distressingly compromised two state solution but behind a movement for equal rights for all between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean sea and the desire to share the riches of a binational democracy.

You can visit the “Know Hope” website here:-  http://www.knowhopefilm.com/ 

Link to  website of The Freedom Theatre :- http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/

Video on project :- https://player.vimeo.com/video/194693220
 
Here is link to crowdfunder page where you can help complete the film. In total, they  need to raise around £75,000 to cover the entire completion costs, and a portion of this they are hoping to crowdfund :-

 http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/know-hope-film/

RIP John Berger- Goodbye to a beautiful mind.( 5/11/26 - 2/1/16)

 

The Booker prize-winning author and art critic, political radical, philosopher, poet, storyteller and one of the most influential intellectuals of our time John Berger has died at the age of 90. 
The Marxist intellectual, whose pioneering 1972 book and subsequent four part BBC series, Ways of Seeing, brought a political perspective to art criticism, died at his home in the Paris suburb of Antony on Monday. He had been ill for about a year.

 In one of his final interviews with the Observer’s Kate Kellaway, giving his view, among other things, on the bigger picture around the Brexit vote.“It seems to me that we have to return, to recapitulate what globalisation meant, because it meant that capitalism, the world financial organisations, became speculative and ceased to be first and foremost productive, and politicians lost nearly all their power to take political decisions – I mean politicians in the traditional sense. Nations ceased to be what they were before.”

Born in Hackney, London, England, Berger served in the British Army from 1944 to 1946; he then enrolled in the Chelsea School of Art and the Central School of Art in London.He began his career as a painter and exhibited work at a number of London galleries in the late 1940s and continued to paint throughout his career.
While teaching drawing (from 1948 to 1955), Berger became an art critic, publishing many essays and reviews in the New Statesman. His Marxist humanism and his strongly stated opinions on modern art made him a controversial figure early in his career. He titled an early collection of essays Permanent Red, in part as a statement of political commitment, and later wrote that before the Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity with the United States he had felt constrained not to criticize the former's policies; afterwards his attitude toward the Soviet state became considerably more critical.Throughout his long life, a vehement critic of capitalism, he kept challenging the way we see the world and how we think about it. 
Berger was he author of art criticism, novels, poetry, screenplays and many other books He won the Booker Prize in 1972 for his novel G, and pledged to give half the prize money to the revolutionary American group the Black Panthers who were he said at the time “the black movement with the socialist and revolutionary perspective that I find myself most in agreement with in this country”..Berger did not just speak of the oppressed, but stood with them, talked with them, and documented their stories.. I've personally  been reading recently  his collaboration with photographer Jean Mohr, A Seventh Man  which originally came out in 1975, that he produced with he rest of the money he was awarded at the Booker prize, in  in which he explored he story of migrant workers who far from being on he margins of modern experience are central to it.
He consistently challenged traditional interpretations of art and society and connections between the two. Berger was not political in a reductionist or dogmatic way. For him, all great art, and all noble politics, is created as a response to life. The great masters don’t interest him simply because they are great. (Art collectors, even the most discriminating ones, he noted, have a “manic obsession to prove that everything he has bought is incomparably great and that anybody who in any way questions this is an ignorant scoundrel.”) Berger studied their visions to learn something about survival, not just his own, but the also the survival of a world where people can live free and meaningful lives.Berger retained a revolutionary urge to stand against authority. Forbidden by a private security guard to draw a sketch of one of the Christs in the National Gallery, he swore and was asked to leave the building, " I take it you know the way out, Sir” said the guard. Berger knows the way out and has plotted the route for all of us.
Goodbye to a beautiful mind.

Here is link to some films about him that  came out last year :-

The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger:

http://seasonsinquincy.com/

Obituary in the Guardian
 
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/02/john-berger-art-critic-and-author-dies-aged-90
 
The following is  what John Berger had to say about poetry :-

"Poems, even when narrative, do not resemble stories. All stories are about battles, of one kind or another, which end in victory or defeat. Everything moves towards the end, when the outcome will be known.
Poems, regardless of any outcome, cross the battlefields, tending the wounded, listening to the wild monologues of the triumphant or the fearful. They bring a kind of peace. Not by anaesthesia or easy reassurance, but by recognition and the promise that what has been experienced cannot disappear as if it had never been. Yet the promise is not of a monument. (Who, still on a battlefield, wants monuments?) The promise is that language has acknowledged, has given shelter, to the experience which demanded, which cried out.
Poems are nearer to prayers than stories, but in poetry there is no one behind the language being prayed to. It is the language itself which has to hear and acknowledge. For the religious poet, the Word is the first attribute of God. In all poetry, words are a presence before they are a means of communication."

― John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos

John Berger - The Art of Looking (2016)

http://www.hddocumentary.com/bbc-john-berger-the-art-of-looking-2016/

Released on the occasion of his 90th birthday John Berger or the Art of Looking is an intimate portrait of the writer and art critic whose ground-breaking work on seeing has shaped our understanding of the concept for over five decades. The film explores how paintings become narratives and stories turn into images, and rarely does anybody demonstrate this as poignantly as Berger.This creative documentary takes a different approach to biography, with John Berger leading in his favourite role of the storyteller.

Every day is precious

(happy new year/blwyddyn newydd da)


Every day is precious

in  the cacophony of confusion

the decrepitude of our civilisation

as time moves on, now is the time
                                         to unite

a chance to reach out, not to fight

comfort strangers in need of  love

all of us the same, brittle as sand

in human form easily bruised

lost sometimes waiting to be found

shadows dancing among the flames

crying for help  waiting to be released

spreading wings in shaking air

each day is a gift delivered

so keep inviting , keep giving support

keep defying the walls that divide

racism,bigotry,  fascism and greed

in  unity we can release comfort

to all that are in need

give the gift of compassion

with all our hearts and soul

reach out with mutual aid

share your love to the world

with hearts full of kindness

our journeys can be strong.

Home - Warsan Shire ( b;1/8/88)

The following powerful poem which brings home the stark reality of the horrifying decisions refugee parents must make, is from the Kenyan-born Somali poet Warsan Shire who emigrated to the United Kingdom at the age of one. She became London’s  first ever Young Poet Laureate, and became a voice for its marginalised people. Her verse forms the backbone of  queen of pop Beyoncé’s  recent album Lemonade.. 
I hope that  2017 will be a year of justice, a year of change, and that humanity keeps giving a warm welcome to all people depicted in the following poem. Let us not forget the many millions displaced, either as refugees, asylum seekers, migrants or internally displaced persons whose  daily existence is one of struggle. Remember no one chooses the country they are born in to and no one deserves to be persecuted because of it, especially if the country they happen to be born into has been torn apart and become unsafe to live in  because of war that is funded by our own governments.
As another year turns and the refugee crisis and this human tragedy continues unabated, let's keep commemorating the strength, courage and resilience of millions of refugees the world over.

Home

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay

no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied

no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough

the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. " - Albert Einstein (14/3/1879 -18/4/55)

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
- Albert Einstein

As 2016 draws to a close  I feel sadness at the passing of people I didn't know but who made my life brighter. And sadness too for people I didn't know whose awful and undeserved deaths made me question what world we're living in. No human should be bombed or drowned seeking safety.
Ultimately we are all an intrinsic part of this universe. We are all interconnected, and even though each of us separate individuals.We should appreciate the slender threads that hold us together.Through compassion we can share the ultimate and most meaningful embodiment of our emotional maturity. If we stop feeling for strangers we lose the energy to make the world better.
People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason the world is in chaos, is things are being loved and people are being used.
Happy New Year/flwyddyn newydd da