We see that the government is withholding NHS performance data until after the Election.I wonder why that is? Could it be that it is not very good?
One reason why there are more people in A  &E  is the following
A cardiologist who diagnosed my husband’s severe problems wished to admit him into hospital  then.At one time he could have done the referral himself.However, he told me he could only do it nowadays by sending us to A & E.After previous experiences I absolutely refused and brought him home.[He was finally admitted  in  ” an end of life situation”  late one evening and died the next afternoon]

So do you want Tories making more “savings” like this?
Are you willing to pay a bit more tax if you earn over £80,000 per annum?
Do you believe you will live forever and never have a serious accident or fatal illness?
Think again

https://oceanwide-expeditions.com/de/trip-log/pla32-15-pla33-15-trip-log-atlantic-odyssey-ushuaia-ascension-cape-verde

The sky is stark, the air is cool and still
The black cat’s run, the birds unfold all day
I sit down here and with my totty pray
Ye cast o’ foolish thoughts, you raped my will.
We’ve each enraged the bureaucratic mill.
Oh frigid purse, I never meant to pay!
The sky ‘s a-spark, the air is warm and shrill
The saturnine , demoted, knelled their way
With this feathered pounce, my sample quill,
I cite the cheque and date it for next May.
Oh, tit for cat, the tiger’s bed ‘s astray.
Yer life is settled by a harlot’s will
The sky ‘s a shark, the air is cooler still,

You can buy a pack of pre-cooked chips ready to warm in your microwave for £2.50… just for one person!What does this tell us about our society?

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bedouin

“Most Bedouins are animal herders who migrate into the desert during the rainy winter season and move back toward the cultivated land in the dry summer months. Bedouin tribes have traditionally been classified according to the animal species that are the basis of their livelihood. Camel nomads occupy huge territories and are organized into large tribes in the Sahara, Syrian, and Arabian deserts. Sheep and goat nomads have smaller ranges, staying mainly near the cultivated regions of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. Cattle nomads are found chiefly in South Arabia and in Sudan, where they are called Baqqārah (Baggara). Historically many Bedouin groups also raided trade caravans and villages at the margins of settled areas or extracted payments from settled areas in return for protection.”

The Bedouins, refugees from other times
The places were they live are still the same
But other people founded States and took
The deserts where they roamed , ancestral nooks.

Ther little tents of black on the hillsides
Have not changed from Mediaeval times
But now they are like flies, unwanted guests
Who will know the tremor in their breasts?

Cruel is the heart of humankind,
The Commandments spat on daily by men blind.
The Bedouins of our spirit need to be
Allowed their space, allowed  their deserts free

o Who should speak, which people have a voice?
Can we trust the ones who’ve told such lies
Post-truth, post-God, post meaning, post remorse?

If we’re wounded, who shall give recourse?
Does it matter to them what we’re tortured by?
Who should speak, which people own their voice?

If we hear bad news, what is its source?
See the bodies , hear the babies cry,
Post-truth, post-God, post meaning, post remorse?

Can we spread democracy by force?
Is it still democracy post-war?
Who should speak, which people own their voice?

Which of all the methods is the choice?
What is politics the reason for,
Post-truth, post-God, post meaning, post remorse?

If I speak, will you believe I lie?
The tongues of angels whisper,what of Troy
Who should speak, which people have a voice?
Post-truth, post-God, post meaning, post remorse

Menu

1.Avocado cares with free lemon juice  9/6 each
Melon and ape salad with free dressing [ elastoplast] 7/6
Marmite jelly on toes  3/6
Mock curtain  jelly 8/6
Hot carrot spook and bed roll 11/6 [no sleeping bugs]

2,  All £2 10 shillings and 5 pence

Lamp chops with risque chips and Brussels
Vegetarian Roast Leaf and frozen Yorks pudding.
Potato pie and  cucumber ballad
Chicken Flies with Curried Wings and Lice

3. Free:  Just desserts

Jellied blackberries and short head with stream
Plane Yoghurt and Scream
Whose Berry Fools with Lemon Noose.
Cheese and Friskies.
Celery stalks and green water cries.For vegetarians
Chocolate Mice [ real mice if the trap works]
Poison Pie with bastard

I read  fine books on poetry by Plath
Her genius arrived clearly, what a force….
An edgy woman emitting sharp, bright wrath

An immigrant, her German roots surpassed
Two languages  entwined, a unique voice
I read  the wanton works of Sylvia Plath

She early found her voice, direct of path
But fate was inconsistent with her choice.
Mercurial, she  troubled love with wrath

Her suicide predictable as maths;
Her suffering and her German soul  flew loose
I voiced the books of poetry by Plath

Her problem was in finding a true man
She had more faith from Ariel her horse
This vital woman, torment gave at last

Did  he feel his freedom was well worth
Hearing the electric blackbird’s  curse?
I read the brave, mad poetry of Plath
Imperious, what  vocabulary, what mass!

The kitchen floor was cleaner than before
The Iron Age Curtain , wall without a door.
The steam, the heat intense, un-layers.

The unconscious mind is timeless, is prepared.
How do we discover what it’s stored?
Is Britain sacred,classier than before?

All work is done by people, not by prayer.
Each nightmare spins an image from the store
The streaming media  sacrifice more players

Beforethe vote, there comes  unthought despair
To make some sense of all our hard-won lore
The government  grows stupider, devours

Men advise me not to say I’m fey
Others find  the News, continuous, bores
The steaming rage  has taken off their layers

We’d like  our politicians to endure
The economic game plan and its cure.
The  forest floor is darker than before
Woodlands wild, creative have no door

Mike has kindly sent a  photo of my husband’s favourite harbour, not counting Whitby
I can feel myself standing there watching the boat come in… it is quite difficult with sand banks

I do not see my future, how to go
But now I have steam cleaned the kitchen floor
If I  run out of  all my china plates
I’ll eat meat off the floor till I am late.

I only see a half of what most see.
But still enjoy to swill my throat with tea.
The world is so delightful, I must smile
My grin is  wider than the Royal Mile,

We wonder about ethics and virtue
But what matters is our choice and choose we do.
The new doormat’s good,  for it is bright
My little bay tree  loves the air and light

When the dirt is vanquished for a time
I sit down with a pen and start to write.
Dirt’s a symbol  of  our human sin
Yet without it,  plants have nothing to grow in

So dirt and dust, creative elements
Are only bad when  they create a stench
I found some fruit that rotted in its bag
The odour was, in its way, very bad.

At first, I could not locate the odour’s source
I wondered if it came from my parts “coarse”
But no I’ve never smelled as  bad
As bananas stuck inside a plastic bag

And do it is when we wear manmade cloth
The heat of polyester  brings out wrath
For  sweat or moisture can’t evaporate
We swelter like  a vine of purple grapes.

My husband was the first child, and only one for many years, of his parents.When we got married they used to come to stay.I think it was my choice of menu  that was a bit of a problem.I was unused to making the more sophisticated type of recipes.We used bought jellies at home and Carnation milk.
But they were very brave.After I made a curry they ate it with no fuss and then said it was the first time they ever ate rice not in a pudding.Then when I  used some Instant Whip to make a dessert, his dad called out:
I’ve never seen a green pudding before.[Maybe it was lime flavoured.]
Then his Mam was like,
Shut up, Ron.Stop passing remarks.
She was always correcting him,
So then he laughed and asked for a cup of tea.No doubt I had the wrong sort!
After that we had to play games as we had no TV or we went for a drive later when we got an old car.Going for a drive was quite popular then as nobody was used to having a car.
My Mam in law could be cruel in obeying social niceties..Before his Dad died we took a week off and drove them all over Dad’s favourite places.On the way back from Richmond he wanted to pee.He was very frail and ill and she told him to wait so I then told my husband to drive to a village with a public convenience. [I have a weak bladder so I knew]
We took him to Whitby but he stayed in the car.I recall it was very misty.I stayed with him while   Mam and my husband went for a walk by  on the beach.That was her favourite thing, walking on the shore whereas Dad preferred the dales and moors.
Now to think I am the only one left.Nobody to eat my cordon bleu apple mousse or beef in ale.I think I’ll be going back to that green pudding.Instant Whip sounds like Fifty Shades of Grey.
In a hurry? Give him/her an Instant Whip…I don’t like that,our Kath.No me neither.
It was a more innocent time though cruelty was common.

I feel your presence though you never speak
In your last three hours, I held your hand
Your mind  endured with will  its  final task
To reach the entrance to that “Promised Land”

But now I sense you  in these dingy rooms
I cannot touch you though, it makes me sad
I cannot hear you speak or  hear  you  sing
Nor smell the honey with which you were clad

I  wept when looking for your old cartoons
And came down here to get a break
They seemed   most you of all the books you had
I have no letters nor any sort of sake

Where do I go now, I ask  your ghost
There is no answer, yet I feel love close.

I’d  like some new hair for Xmas
What I have got is too sparse
It covers my head
But not  that of my bed
I think I shall  need  a new purse.

My husband was good  with his visage
He looked like a man from the moon
He sang in the bath
Unless it was wrath
That made him change his own tunes

His skin was like rubber but thinner
It was stronger than mine is by far
I am so sensitive,
Please do not mention it
Or the police may think I’m bizarre.

I went into the best cafe in town
And when therein I let myself sit down.
I ordered a large and precious drink
Made from coffee and elastic  ink.

I sipped and gazed at all the gadding crowd
Speaking  tongues  like angels well endowed
Clutching phablets showing films and fun
They walk into the lamp posts now and then.

I  gave the waitress  my  last £5 note
On which some ancient wording was once wrote
She threw it down and said, it’s out of date
The plastic ones are all we now can take

I had only a bus pass in my purse
Now I’m in jail and writing worser verse.

PS the errors in grammar are deliberate!

Shall I compare a  kitchen knife to thee?
Thy cut is sharper than best Viner’s steel
Thy tongue is longer than  the roots of  trees
Thou serpent,  get thee to my heel.

Thy cold remarks, thou preferst thy cat to me
And I gave thee tender love both day and night
A fool , an idiot would love  better than thee
So get thee hence, be distant from my sight.

Boastful of thy organ’s latent  powers
Thou wished to found a noble dynasty
Aladdin’s lamp, when rubbed, did glow for hours
The same cannot be said, alas, of thee!

A stronger  man would  be less arrogant
Those who do beat those who find they can’t

Oh, light bulb foreseen by our God
Save us all from darkness’ rod
You are our Saviour as foretold
In prophecy by ancients bold.
We will worship you at night
When sunken is the sun so bright.
We’ll watch TV and Kindle fire
No more to play shall we aspire.
We’ll wear ourselves out watching screens,
As from a can we eat baked beans
We’ll send for pizzas with our phones
With which we never feel alone.
We might talk to our partner dear
Though texting them is easier.
We see the neon street lights gleam
Where once we saw the moon’s cold beams
And in bed we read our books
With a kindle or a nook
We put beneath out pillows fair
Iphones which we long to hear
Can one have too much new light?
From technology, some take flight
For gone are seasons, and their fruit
As our computer we reboot.
New potatoes all year round
Avocados once quite rare
Now are seem ‘most everywhere.
Melons, grapes and fresh green peas
As the birds sing, life’s a breeze.
Oh light bulbs, fluorescent tubes
Electric candle, light is cubed.
We thank you for extended days
Maybe we’ll find time for prayers.
God is great in mystery
No light bulb can help us see.
In silence, darkness, meditate
Wonder what will be our fate.
As retribution for our wrongs
Satan stabs us with his prongs
He needs no more light in hell
The fiery furnace cooks as well.

In order to be happy, you must write,
On paper with a pen and bottled ink,
A hundred villanelles about your plight

If you use  thesauri, keep it tight,
For too much intellect will make men think
In order to be happy, you must write

Don’t use Latin phrases, just emote.
Here and there insert a proper link
To a hundred villanelles about your plight

Never check for errors what you wrote.
Wash your hair twice daily in green quink.
In order to be happy, you must  float

If you’re wise then soon you’ll see the Light.
Stare at it and ask it how it ranks
A hundred villanelles about your plight

Once I was  so fat, my hair was lank
It still is but I don’t care a plonk
In order to be funny, you must write,
A hundred villanelles and then take flight.