Reblog ... BBC and press ignore massive demonstration against austerity in London

http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/06/21/bbc-and-press-ignore-massive-demonstration-against-austerity-in-london/

And here's a later blog proving that the beeb don't want to talk about it ... even though Al Jazeera and even the Russian media do ... http://mikesivier.wordpress.com/2014/06/21/ask-the-bbc-why-it-didnt-cover-the-anti-austerity-demo-heres-what-you-can-expect/

Oh, and it's worse than you might think ... the beeb knew it was on ... the march started outside broadcasting house (or whatever the new place is called) and apparently they (the bbc) even laid on extra security around their site because of it.

Reblog ... Why the Government Doesn't Want To Solve The Housing Crisis

Well presented and notable commentary on the reality behind the headlines ... http://realfare.wordpress.com/2014/06/17/why-the-government-doesnt-want-to-solve-the-housing-crisis/

Depression … it sneaks up on you

About 18 months ago, I was (finally, after breaking down in the surgery after a simple ‘how are you’ question) diagnosed with either severe depression, or when it came to writing my ‘fit’ notes, low mood.  Which is it?  Well, the only question on the test I could ever answer with a positive slant (and this was true for years before my diagnosis too) was the suicidal one, so you decide.

I was put on meds, but only a low dose, so it never really felt like it was doing anything except maybe control the weepiness at times.  I told my GP this several times, only to be told to stay on them a few more months.

When ‘he’ left, and mum died, all in the space of a few days, I was in such an odd state of mind that taking tablets was the last thing I could concentrate on for about a month, so I accidentally came off the meds.  And for a couple of months, I didn’t feel any different.  In fact, if anything, I felt better than I had for a while.

But not anymore.

Now, the instant crying at nothing is back, the feelings of not wanting to do anything, the inability to find pleasure, the struggle to be around others, to deal with noise.  I’m jumpy, but at the same time slow to react.  I’m needing support, but at the same time can’t be near or cope with others for any length of time, even in the virtual world.  I’m unsettled, but at the same time, unable to do anything.  My appetite is all over the place.  I can feel fine and wanting, eager even, to do things one minute, and literally in the next breath, I shut down.

Is it the pills finally clearing my system, or is it that the adrenaline or whatever that’s kept me going since February has finally run out?  I don’t know.  But I do know I can’t get an appointment to see my GP for weeks yet.

It sneaks up on you, depression does.

Reblog ... Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: How do you really practice patient centered care?

"If a human has been broken by the incredible challenges of living with a long term serious illness, it's easy to judge. To believe we would have been stronger, coped better. It's easy to separate patients into deserving and underserving based on their responses to what we sometimes forget can be extreme suffering. It's easy to judge their lives as we judge our own, forgetting the million tiny challenges the patient faces every day that we don't ever need to even consider. We might treat the pain, or clean the wound or prescribe the treatments, but we may never know how hard it is just to make a cup of tea or hold your own children when they cry."


Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: How do you really practice patient centered care?: One of the great disconnects between doctor and patient is the difference between "learning" and "knowing". A competen...

D-Day and my Grandpa

Ernest Henry, known to all as Harry, but always Sonny to his mum, my grandpa, was one of the best examples of a man, an alpha male as so many of my writer friends would put it,  that I ever knew.  He was the man who showed me what a proper relationship should be like, what a man should be.  And this time 70 years ago, he was in a tent in a field somewhere in southern England, about to experience his first taste of action in World War 2.

Born in 1924, he was too young to sign up at the start of the war, so instead volunteered as a messenger for the ARP.  In fact he met my grandmother that way.  The tale was always rolled out about how he’d volunteered to walk her home one night, and broke her mother’s best jug on the way.  (Great Gran still liked him though, they had a great relationship and she lived with them for many years). 

He signed up as soon he was old enough and began his service guarding prisoners of war in this country.  We don’t know much about this period of time, but do know that he was mobilised for D-Day.  He once spoke of the sight that met him when he and his unit were taken down to the south coast, of driving past field upon field of assembled men, supplies and equipment.  He wasn’t in those famous first waves, but, being in the Signals, came in as support, landing at the Mulberry harbours on D-Day+3. 

Once in Europe, he was then stationed on, and in advance of, the front lines for much of the war, laying and maintaining communication lines throughout France and Africa (that I know of).  Whilst in France, he was initially billeted with a local family for a while, and he and Grandma maintained contact with them throughout their lives.

Like so many others though, he never spoke of what truly happened during the war, not to Grandma, the rest of his family, or anyone else.  Then a few years before he passed on, he suddenly turned around one day and told some of the stories, of getting shot at by snipers while fixing lines at the top of a telegraph pole, and of watching his friend, who was also up the pole with him, being killed inches from his face.  He said he’d never gone down a pole so fast, and it's almost impossible to imagine the fear and shock that would have been coursing through him at that time.  That was the only time he opened up, he never spoke of it again.

We do know that on one occasion whilst in Egypt, he shared a plane with Monty.  How that came about I don’t know, it must just have been one of those limited transportation things.

He was in Egypt towards the end of the war, and told the tale of how he thought he was just coming home on a short leave.  He had the choice of filling his kitbag with tinned food for his family who were living under rationing, or bringing home clothes and other items that he’d gathered, a lot from the Americans, whose kit was better quality than the Brits.  He chose the food, of course, and buried the rest in a tin chest before leaving.  He never went back though, being demobbed while he was on leave, so unless someone has dug it up since, somewhere in Egypt is a tin chest full of his belongings.

As so ended his war.  At least in the physical sense.  But, as with the majority of our soldiers, sailors and airmen, during that conflict and all others, the memories stayed with him his entire life.  

It’s strange to think that this may be the last of the major anniversaries where survivors of that war are able to attend.  I grew up with these people, I’m among the last generation to have done so fully.  But I’ll do my damndest to make sure I’m not the last generation to know their stories … even the small, seemingly historically unimportant, ones.