Boarding @ Home: Day 24/84: Social Care for the Elderly and Disabled

Abject failure of public social care exposed by Covid19. On cue, Mathew of Prestoungrange's four year research study with York University is published just as the inadequacy of public and private provision is exposed - and becomes the media narrative! The government brought in the airling, young and 'thoughtless' Chancellor to distract attention at its daily No. 10 Press Conference with a fnord, a surreal set of Domesday scenarios about the economy from the Office for Budget Responsibility. HM Secretary of State for Health and Social Care was kept well away from the journalists. Mathew's research details the nimious, excessive, care lavished on the NHS and State Pensions by national politicians whilst public social care was illaqueate, ensnared, in secondary areas of the English state. There are cognoscible solutions and for this he presciently turned to post War Germany where their health and social care provisions have proved far more adequate to the Covid19 challenge than much of Europe. His own family and us all in Milton with fullest support from Burke's Peerage/ LSI SA have urged him on as he stepped sideways from his profession as an FCA in health care to analyse the causes of such failure and explore ways forward … and here's trusting that his contribution can play a role in the imminent national debate and receive the auscultation, the attention, it deserves. [Wills, Mathew, Sustainably funding a marginal welfare programme: ISBN 979 8631 323780]

We're/ they're all waiting for Boris' resurrection from Chequers of course … .. and no scope for barmecides, illusory feasts. He's recast as he convalesces for the role we well know he plays best - cynosure, stirring optimism whilst stiffening our sinews. The nation has got to lift lockdown and soon. The patterns of social distancing adopted by supermarkets can readily be achieved in factories, warehouses and workshops, at garden centre and d-i-y stores and many a shop, even fast food outlets and restaurants - if those managerially responsible are given and entrusted with a formal 'duty of care'. As for those of us at high risk, over 70s and above, we too must necessarily be allowed back into f2f social interaction, once again exercising our own duties of care. All smart eyes are on Wuhan, South Korea, Sweden and Austria and Denmark and Spain and Italy as they bow to the inevitability of getting back to work/ life balance before more damage is done by purdah than can be wrought by Covid19. The airling Chancellor's narrative as edgelord on the future economic rebound is designed to magnify the mussitations, the murmurings that we should get back to work and that optimism about that is more important now than protecting the NHS or the search for the magic vaccine.
Same day as Mathew's Doctoral thesis, by amazonian post came our new soap dish! Might not seem important but as Tesco opines: 'every little helps'. It's not any auld soap dish mind you following as it does a much loved Delft blue predecessor labelled SAVON. Not to be outdone we have followed our faux French tradition with the new notation Le Bain Paris suggesting fictitious origins as from 17, Rue de l'Abeille, where we are led to believe there stands L'Hotel Des Royales. Abeille incidentally translates as bee.

Amazon also sent us the entire collection of Colin Dexter's Morse titles - remember meeting with him as he gave a talk in Oxford at The Randolph when Carol and I ran a DETC Workshop for Mike Lambert at Buckingham … accreditation quests eh! As John Peter's once remarked: It's the customers who accredit you not your peers!."
Jules and Laura brought home the metaphorical bacon again this afternoon! Feasgar math! They delivered not only the much valued NZ Malborough Sauvignons [Avril and I flew there from Auckland in a very bumpy Air New Zealand plane especially passing overhead Rotorua] but a fine olive loaf so fresh it demanded Danish butter and Stilton followed by a second slice with Vegemite and a glass of Peroni. Lockdown getting worse? It's coffee to look forward to at 11.30 am again on overmorrow …… the day after tomorrow.
Laura's just back home at The Manor House [all viewed from The Dovecote here] in her red sports car having taken her food parcels to her locked down parents in Buckingham. I'm off to a Gaelic class and then back to my book. Tomorrow we hit the Jacobite Trail and follow up on tomorrow's article in the East Lothian Courier picturing Tom Ewing's restored Witch murals …..