Email #34

Dear Harriet

Its been a long day. I have had little sleep.  In fact I was awake at 5am.  Stress does that.  I was determined to enjoy my day however, as I would be spending most of it at football.  I took my youngest to his 'keeper session and then took him with me to work.  When he wasnt kicking balls into stinging nettles (now he knows not to next time!) he was helping me work on my medical bag.

Sorting out what is left over from the last season and the new bits and bobs I have got to restock is time consuming.  Its an arduous but rewarding task.  It involves more than you might think too.

It starts at the end of the season when you look at whats left over, and what will last into the next season, and making lists of what you need.  Then comes the negotiation with the stockists.  This year I have decided to work with a new company because they are cheaper (please let Mr Ian Duncan Smith know that I can budget after all).  Then once all the new stock arrives you have to work out what is excess (how many foil blankets will I really need in one match? this is the South of England not the Himylayas!) what can be moved into other teams bags (Ive given the reserve teams one of my rebreathe masks on the basis that I can only physically perform CPR on one person at a time thus I do not need 4!) and what in return I can pinch from the other teams (cheers M I dont think you need all those ice sprays and the Town physio beat me to the deal in Poundland).  Theres also a lot of receipt keeping too- someone may one day challenge me to prove that I got medical stock for a football club in Poundland, Wilko and Savers (needs must I'm afraid!).

We chatted while we worked with the club skipper and a committee member.  We have worked hard to turn a club that almost went bankrupt at the end of the 2013 season to finish 8th in our league, and our reserves team and ladies team won their leagues and the club ended the financial year with a small profit.  All the corner cutting, the trips to Poundland and the sock tape from screwfix direct (the relabelling of insulating tape as sock tape and marked up at 300-500% more is to me the epitome of captialist free market economics!) has paid off.

This is a small scale model of how a government deals with something like the NHS.  It takes stock at the end of one five year season of government and then starts planning for the next five year season of government.  Unfortunately the incumbent government intends rather than to restock and reorder and spend some money, to break open the bag, spill out the contents, and ship it all off at rock bottom prices to other people in the name of enterprise.

Perhaps, I wonder, as I pack all the dressings into one bag, I should get my sharpie pen and take the Jeremy Hunt approach to medicine, and write on each dressing FUNDED BY THE TAX PAYER.

Somehow I doubt that would go down well with the players.  And they would be right to be narked if I pointed out how much each item costs, how much my time costs, each time they got injured.

Perhaps also I should fine the league each time they call off a match because of bad weather, because that wastes my time and wasted time costs money does it? Well thats certainly what the encumbent government want to do each time someone misses an appointment.  Well we cant help the weather I guess would be what the league would say, just like sometimes missed appointments are not down to ignorance but rather happenstance.

I guess, then, that I should be fined for the fact that my son was late to his assessment with CAMHS last Tuesday then, even though it was made for 9.45am at a hospital 25 miles away, where the only two options for getting there involved dealing with heavy traffic where people were going to work and school,  I guess I should have got up and left early, except I had to take my other son and nephew to school for 9am and I can only leave them so early at a school with no breakfast club.  Added to this was the fact that because my son was stressed about the appointment he had a meltdown before we even left the house.  Sometimes LIFE just happens.

In and ideal world people would be able to afford the 55p for ibuprofen when they are unwell or have a chronic pain condition. or the £4 for Calpol when their baby has a 3 day fever but we are not in an ideal world, we are in one where people rely on foodbanks to feed their children, and run out of gas and electric on their prepaid meters before they get money again because of exorbitant tarifs imposed by the "energy giants".  And thats happening to people IN work not just the unemployed.

The NHS like the welfare state was set up for cradle to grave care at the point of need, so it shouldnt matter if you need 55p worth of ibuprofen, £4 worth of calpol or a £500 MRI- if you need it, its there to get because you are supposed to be insured for it.  That is what the National Insurance payment is for: you and your family, if they need it.  So its not supposed to matter if you never worked, because someone related to you did and all of us pay tax whether ANY government wants to admit it.

If someone had an accident in their car and it was written off, you wouldnt have another company continually assess the car to see if it was driveable, and you wouldnt get a decision maker disregard the vehicle inspectors report saying the car was not driveable and then try to make the owner drive it.  They wouldnt get told you cant have any money for this car, or be told here is a payment for the car, but its in the form of a loan so once you have a driveable car, you must pay this back.  There would be outrage because the insured party had already paid their premiums.

Someone needs to inject a bit of realism and a bit of common sense into the policies, both current and suggested for the future and start tearing through the myths, half truths and down right lies.

That needs to come from the opposition benches and that means the Labour Party.

Inject some realism into the debate.  Start spelling out in real terms what this means for the lay member, the common man, the Mr Joe Public down the street.

Speak up and speak out against what is happening and challenge the arguments with the truth. Debunk their myths.  Give people the truth.

Be a party that stands up for the common man, who is suffering under the reality of policies that lack even a modicum of sense.

Let people see what is really happening to the Great British Public

Constituent, Labour Party member, Union member, sleep deprived carer, concerned citizen, self employed mother, mother of a teenager with ASD, socialist, environmentalist, Disabled Rights supporter, Jeremy Corbyn supporter, mother feeding her children with nectar points, defender of the vulnerable, advocate, logistics savant, concerned niece, grassroots activist, anti austerity campaigner, RNLI supporter, unashamed welfare state service user & social housing tenant, protester, fire brigade supporter, carers allowance claimant, less than perfect parent, socialist agitator, worrier, mental health service user, football mum, social justice campaigner, immigrant, proletarian, CND supporter, #endausteritynow campaigner, someone with nothing better to do than wait for a plumber, cost cutting football medic