Cold, wet and the NHS in a mess

13 January

While so much of the UK is under snow or fearing floods, our little town has got away with it again with only a slight dusting of snow. That seems about par for the course for us. If we do get a good covering, then the rest of the country is really badly affected by it. Flooding can be a problem though, but even so, not to the extent of other areas. There are photos around from when Bond Gate was flooded to around three feet, all for the River Anker that runs through that part of the town. There’s a slight dip on the road at the junction of Queens Road (formally Wash Brook Lane) and Edward Street, which tends to flood every so often. The former name or Wash Brook Lane is the clue there where a Wash Brook used to run down the middle of the road. It was covered over at some point and is still runs through there coming out by Mill Street/Mill Walk. Just to add a few more gallons to the flow, there’s a small stream that runs down the rear of Duke Street and joins Wash Brook at some point. I also have a feel a feeling there’s another one that joins it from the other side of Queens Road that comes down for the Coventry Canal, but that isn’t a certainly.

The town’s name comes from a Saxon word, Eaton, which means water town, or town by water. Most of the waterways in the town are small streams or brooks which all tend to run into the Anker at some point. The largest of these is Wem Brook, which begins its journey in Bed’th and joins the Anker in the Pingles Fields. Taking in to account all of these water courses that all join the Anker at some point, you can perhaps see where the name comes from. The Nun part of the name comes from the nuns who were resident at St Mary’s Abbey on what is now Manor Court Road. Like so many other places of worship the abbey became to Henry VIII’s greed for money and power. The remains of the old Abbey can still be seen in the grounds of what is now known at St Mary’s Abbey parish church.

Coming up to date then … This morning is bright any sunny but bitterly cold. We were due to Kile again this weekend but we have had a text come in to say he is off to Brum tomorrow for a shopping trip, he’ll love that – NOT! I suppose it will be all down to what they are planning to shop for. What it means is that we can now look at what we can do now, but it won’t be much really. I really could do with getting some writing done with none done since the 35 words I did late week end. Ah well …

Did you by any chance watch that BBC2 show Hospital? Talk about waste – it’s crazy the way they are being forced to work right now, and there’s more cuts on the way too. For those who missed it, it featured two patients who needed ITU post-operative care. The problem was there were no beds in ITU to put them. Eventually one man got his surgery done, the second man was cancelled for the second time when an emergency came in by ambulance from Norwich. That second patient had his op the following day but died five weeks later due a problem from the operation. What we don’t know is whether he would have lived longer if he had been done instead of being cancelled twice.

There is little doubt in my mind that our NHS is in dire straits right now, any yet there is so much waste within the service, waste that staff have little or no room to control when patients are waiting, when OR staff are on hold waiting for the word to begin surgery. There really is only so much wiggle room and even that is becoming even tighter. All the slack has been taken up and many hospital are working at 100% capacity. I had a look at MSN home news feed this morning and there’s a story about a 22 month old child with a suspected case of meningitis forced to wait five hours in A&E, simply because there wasn’t a bed for him and the crush of patients turning up at A&E. All the Prime Muppet could say was nothing she could do about it. Oh, really? She is now in charge and there is plenty she can do about it! For starters she could order any cuts to funding to stopped, she could order more beds for hospitals and staff to run them.

At what point will they come to realise that they need to act now, not later. Earlier this week the same Prime Muppet was making promises about mental health care provision. But when will that happen, and will the funds for that be ring-fenced so it gets spent where it should be spent, not being merged in with the general health care budget. Does she have means to start kicking the arses of those who run the service or is she just like all the others, nowt but piss and wind in twisted knickers!

Today’s photo …

A primrose methinks.

Today’s funny …

 Did you hear about the cannibal that arrived late for a dinner party? He said, 'Am I late?'
They said, 'Yes, everybody's eaten.'