April 27th, 2022.
Well, it’s been a busy couple of weeks. Family arrived at Heathrow and managed to clear immigration etc in an hour, which given the horror stories in the media lately was a pleasant surprise. There have been 400 metre queues and waiting times of up to 5 hours, with Manchester being the main culprit.
Unusually for the UK, the boss of Manchester airport resigned. The initial views of my visitors were comments on the variety of food and how cheap it is. This came as a shock as inflation is running away at about 8% and rising. Once the latest fuel and power increases come through and shortages of cooking oil, flour and other essentials hit, the forecast is for double figures by Christmas.
ANZAC day was quiet and I paid my respects at the local war memorial. It was a strange sensation being the only person there in the early morning.
It was especially sad as our local celebrity passed away last week. Harry Billinge was 96 when he passed and was a veteran of the D-Day landings.
Harry was a local celebrity often found on his chair in the local market, fund raising for the services. He was appointed an MBE in 2020 after raising more than £50,000 to build a national memorial honouring his fallen comrades. He served as a combat engineer, being part of the Royal Engineer Commandos and was one of only 4 from his unit who survived the landings. He was survived by his wife of 68 years and their 3 children.
His funeral was on Tuesday 26th in Charlestown, St, Austell and the procession through the streets to the church was observed by a multitude of locals.
The coffin of the 96-year-old war veteran was carried into St Paul’s Church in Charlestown, Cornwall.
His epitaph was typically humble, “I’m not a hero, I’m lucky. All the heroes are dead, and I’ll never forget them.”
In 2018 he returned to Gold Beach where he landed in 1944 and 6 months ago visited the memorial to the fallen in Normandy.
It was good to see that there is still a community spirit that recognises local achievements. In this day and age, it was good to see the genuine feelings on display as the procession made its way through Charlestown, the large turnout of townsfolk being a genuine reflection of local feelings.
All this feeling of goodwill is unfortunately not present throughout the rest of the country. My folks were staggered at the feeling of impending poverty spreading throughout the lower socio-economic groups in the UK. With inflation set to run riot and wage increases averaging about 3%, people are finding it hard to survive and food banks are proliferating. This is hard on people on fixed incomes such as pensioners who had an increase of 3.1%. Of course, all this is being taken advantage of politically by the opposition Labour party, and whilst they are of course exaggerating the issues, it doesn’t disguise the fact that there is a lot of truth in the situation.
With local elections coming up in the next two weeks it looks as though the Conservative party will be in for a hammering. It is their own fault, as they have made the UK the most taxed it has been in 60+ years, and the taxes are hitting the lower socio-economic groups most.
Community workers are reporting increasing cases of pensioners choosing between heating and food.
This will deteriorate during the year and will further bleed support from the Conservatives, especially in the North.
My folks return to NZ next week, but with a vision of what the future holds for their country.
Their feelings weren’t improved by a High Court ruling just released today.
The High Court has ruled that the Government broke the law by failing to protect 20,000 care home residents who died of Covid-19.
Judges said the government policy of discharging patients to care homes from hospitals during the initial Covid-19 pandemic was “unlawful”.
Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Garnham ruled that the policies, detailed in released between March and early April 2020 were unlawful. The judges said the policies did not take into account risks to elderly and vulnerable care home residents from the virus.
The court said that despite “growing awareness” of asymptomatic Covid transmission at the time, no proof that former health secretary Matt Hancock addressed the matter in relation to this policy.
Source Politics.co.uk 27th April 2022.
The government is still processing this, but it is not good news for them.
