Dear Dave, I hope you really are listening!

Dear Dave,

I hear that you and Jeremy Hunt have cancelled the meetings with junior doctors round the country and I saw a film of you looking most surprised when one of them told you what a hash you had made of the contracts.  I am hopeful that you are in a quiet session with Jeremy and George and working out how you can undo this awful mistake.  You see I just don't believe that you don't care and I don't believe that you want the doctors I know going off to Australia or not being able to have babies while they are under punitive contracts with the National Health Service.

Grandpa and I are on holiday with our family who have decided we need looking after!  They do the driving and the cooking and the planning of our days and we have been rather surprised and delighted to find that they are a wonderful new generation, one is a teacher, two are doctors and one is a civil servant.  They are all wanting to make a difference to their fellow beings and have reasonable lives themselves.  I am sure that YOU like us want this to be the case but for sure it isn't if you drive through these terrible terribly unfair contracts

Love to you and Jeremy and George and all your cabinet colleagues who I am sure are doing your best to sort this out.

10 people's Granny

See below Nick Aresti in the Huffington Post

British healthcare workers discovered DNA. They designed the first antibiotic. They invented the ophthalmoscope, the thermometer, the CT scanner and the MRI machine. They were the first to stop and start a beating heart and the first to conceive a baby in a test tube. They operated on me within weeks of being born, and recently gave my elderly relative first class health care when she broke her hip.

I am proud to work for the NHS. It's a wonderful institution that we should all be proud of. I remember I once asked a consultant why he went over and above what was expected of him, in effect doing the job of two consultants. Without a moment's hesitation, he replied; "the NHS took care of me so well in my training, that I owe it to the NHS". Echoing his sentiment, other than the well being of my patients, what underpins my dedication to the NHS is that the NHS has looked after me, and so I must look after it. Many of my colleagues have resisted offers to double their salaries in consultancy firms and plenty have refused offers of working abroad, for better working conditions, hours and pay.

I will attempt to explain the injustice surrounding the proposed contracts. You have heard the rhetoric. You have seen the petitions across social media. You have seen the facts and figures demonstrating a 30% cut in the salaries and changes in the working patterns of junior doctors, most of whom in my experience work tirelessly for their patients. If you were faced with a cut in your salary by a third, when you had only ever exceeded your targets, you would probably be left with a distinct feeling of injustice. You would probably consider seeking alternative employment.

What you may not realise, is that the contract changes go further than a simple pay cut. Female doctors will struggle to take maternity leave due to the contract structure, and even the choice of when to take annual leave will become more rigid than optional. The next Francis Crick (co-discovered the structure of DNA) or even Bruce Keogh (National Medical Director) will be denied the necessary support to pursue research degrees and perhaps the expertise it takes to run the only health service in the world that is free at the point of service.

What I find particularly insulting regarding the proposed new contracts is not the pay cut and changes in working patterns, but the government's smoke screen of patient safety as an excuse to push through the changes. In my opinion, the disharmony amongst the medical profession caused by the threat of the new contracts has caused a far greater risk to patient care than the current working patterns. We all know what the new contracts are about. Money.

For now, our rotas will remain covered. Our patients will still be seen, and the most vulnerable given first class medical treatment. But how long will this last? Junior doctors will begin to leave in droves. Already 40-60% of foundation doctors are choosing not to apply for specialist training. A third of GP training posts are unfilled. So are half of A&E training jobs. We have seen a dramatic rise in the number of applications for 'certificates of good standing' - the paperwork required to work abroad. Those who have gone to Australia, New Zealand and North America, are deciding not to come back. We are already facing a recruitment crisis that could alarmingly escalate. The future gaps in workforce will be the greatest risk to patient safety, not the current contracts, as the government is suggesting.

Overwhelming evidence shows that a valued, supported and motivated workforce leads to better health care and productivity (Sears Employee-Customer-Profit chain). Demoralising the junior doctor workforce will be the next great risk to patient safety.

This contract change is not only unjustified, but also plain and simply wrong. Goodwill is the oil that lubricates the NHS machine, and junior doctors its fuel. Both are at risk of quickly becoming in short supply.

Nick Aresti is a junior doctor working in London.

David Cameron, I am going to need all the help I can get!

That's YOU Dave, you have the power to change things!

Dear Dave,

You may think that because I wrote about Jeremy Corbyn suspecting he wouldn't really do the business as a leader of the country because of his record as a promise breaker that I was definitely going to be voting for you!  Now, I look and feel  like a natural conservative, being old and plus you look a bit like Grandpa.  But, if you don't take a bit more care with the people who are the National Health I might be off elsewhere.  You see, when you get old, even if you take care, your body becomes tiresome, it aches a bit, it hatches unexpected illnesses, it needs help and it will need and does need good medical help.  I am dead against (excuse the pun) early exiting just because the body is tiresome and maybe that I am tiresome to my relatives so I am going to need doctors.  In my family there is one and that one is married to another one and I can see how hard they work.  I know how long and costly their training was, how stressful their exams and more what an extraordinary service they render to people like me and to people who are really suffering.  You and Jeremy Hunt have really messed up with the new contracts you are offering them, those contracts mean that they are stuffed financially unless they leave and go to Australia or leave and take a job as a physician's assistant (which takes only two years to train for and can command a starting salary for a first job of more than those doctors).

So, what I and Grandpa are saying is that we thought that you KNEW about this, we thought that you had a real understanding of how important this is, we thought you could imagine yourself as that old person or that sick person and that you would know that we needed good doctors who not only could administer drugs and treatment but were able to exercise the loving kindness so important to those of us making our way towards a good end.

Two good old Grandpas deserving care

So, think again Dave, I don't mind about the Bullingdon stuff or anything else you may have ever done but oh yes, I do mind that my doctor daughter will have to put off having children, will have trouble paying a mortgage and will be so hacked off with doctoring that the natural loving kindness she brings to her job will be brought to a halt.

I am however optimistic that you and Jeremy have just made a silly mistake and you will be putting it right soon.  How about next week?

Love from someone else's Granny

Assisted Dying, a Grandmother's view

Shane Mulhall, a man worth listening to

Assisted dying is on everyone's lips and everyone has a view about it.  When you are over a certain age, dying is definitely something that begins to be on the menu, starters are over, the main course is finished and the waitress is approaching with the final dessert menu!  So, yes, I think about it and we, Grandpa and I think about it.  This is what we think!  The real assistance with dying comes from true compassion and not from sentimentality.  True compassion takes account of every aspect of a person's being, it looks to the welfare of the body and the mind but it's main focus is the real person, the soul.  So, wisdom let's you see that the body and mind might just not be the same as the soul.  Bodies and minds are going to undergo death but the soul maybe doesn't.  Wise people say for sure that the soul absolutely doesn't die and having watched people do the dying, I am sure that it is true.  One moment the soul is there in the body and the next moment it has gone.  It is a good thing if it can go easily and naturally and without any grief or anger or resentment.  If the body and mind are looked after properly, the soul is assisted in it's leaving.  The whole composition of a human being allows some of that parturition to take place anyway.  Things have less hold as you get older, especially the  body which gets less comfortable and moves rather creakily.  Now the mind is where you need the assistance to see that you will be alright, you will be looked after and that if you have fortitude and courage and cheerfulness and especially if you have family around you and good nursing, you can make it to the end with real assistance and there doesn't need to be a law to make it happen well.
There is a man from Ireland coming to give a talk first in Cambridge, then in Wessex on the State of the World.  This man hasn't been well and it isn't likely that he is going to get better.  He absolutely knows that he isn't the body and so with every breath and every moment, he responds to people's questions and invitations to come and speak to them.  His name is Shane Mulhall and he is a Grandpa with wisdom.  You can come and hear him speak too if you are near either Cambridge or Wessex.  If you click on this link, you can register your attendance.  I can tell you it will be worth it no matter what age you are nor what part of the menu of life is the part you are looking at.

(https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-state-of-the-world-tickets-17845816317)

If you believe in God, you can afford to be optimistic like the Queen

Hey you Grannies and Grandpas,

To give the best in all that the day brings

I like the article by Libby Purves in today's Times where she writes about faith and our own longest reigning monarch, H M The Queen's strong, steady and spoken commitment to God.  She highlights the Queen's annual Christmas message which is always underpinned by the fact of her faith.  The Queen's message almost always contains reference to faith and Libby Purves has picked out this gem from these messages which is worth passing on "the teachings of Christ and my own personal accountability before God provide a framework.....I know that the only way to live my life is to try to do what is right, to take the long view, to give of the best in all that the day brings, and to put my trust in God".
That this is what underpins her life is a quiet truth, she only says it once a year and then she gets on the living the life and doing her best.
I like the way that the Queen encourages us to take the Long View.  If we took a short view, then when bad things happen we could be tempted to think that God wasn't looking.  But if we take the long view which is rather more daring, we would see that everything tends back to the good, that out of bad the good still comes.  God comes stealthily into our midst and sometimes makes good when we are fast asleep.
It's worth passing on this belief to the young in whatever way you can.  She does and you can too.