People travelling to Cornwall for New Year told to pack their own medication by NHS trust

People heading to Cornwall to celebrate New Year have been urged to pack their own first aid supplies as health services struggle under “extreme pressure”.

Does this also apply when visiting Budleigh? “Budleigh residents offer verbal abuse queuing on the street to get their pills” ?

news.sky.com 

Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, which has urged people to only call 999 or visit A&E for life-threatening illnesses and injuries, advised people to pack pain relief, flu and cold remedy and rehydration powders, as well as any prescription medicines.

The trust tweeted the advice: “Heading to #Cornwall this #NewYear? Just in case, be wise and bring these three self-care kings! Pain relief, flu and cold remedy and rehydration powders. And don’t forget to pack any prescription medicines, too. #HelpUsHelpYou.”

The trust attached an image detailing what people should have in a first aid kit, including bandages, dressings, tweezers, scissors, antiseptic and medical tape.

South Western Ambulance Service, which covers the region, has declared a critical incident due to being under “extreme pressure”.

On Wednesday morning, it said there were 482 patients waiting for ambulances, with 106 patients awaiting handover at hospitals across the region.

Adrian Harris, chief medical officer of Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, described how emergency departments were under “incredible pressure”.

“I’m asking all of the public to think very carefully before attending, to think about using 111 either online or on a telephone, to think about going to their pharmacy, and when necessary contacting their general practitioner,” he said.

“We are very, very busy so please don’t attend unless absolutely necessary. If you’re in doubt and you think you need help, please come and see us. We’re open but we are very, very busy.”

Other trusts to declare a critical incident include Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, which said there was “significant ongoing pressure on local NHS services”.

The trust has seen “record numbers” of people attending accident and emergency departments, calling 111, accessing GP services and calling 999, it said.

There are also “ongoing challenges in discharging patients who are well enough to leave hospital”, as well as an increase in staff sickness.

North East Ambulance Service declared a critical incident on 27 December, describing “unprecedented pressure across the health system”.

It said there were “significant delays” for more than 100 patients waiting for an ambulance, together with a reduction in ambulance crew availability to respond due to delays handing over patients at hospitals.

One in 10 Conservative peers are big donors to the party, giving almost £50m in total, new analysis shows, amid controversy over more financial backers believed to have been put forward on Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list.

Rowena Mason www.theguardian.com

After speculation about more donors due to get peerages within the coming weeks, figures compiled by the Guardian show 27 out of the party’s 274 peers have given more than £100,000 to the Conservatives.

The rate of donors being given peerages appears to have picked up over the last six years, during the tenures of Theresa May and Boris Johnson.

The new year honours list giving out knighthoods and damehoods is due to be published on Friday, with Rishi Sunak under pressure to clean up politics by cutting out big donors. Last year under Johnson, David Winton Harding, a billionaire hedge fund manager who had given £1.5m to the Tories, was given a knighthood.

During his three years in power, Johnson submitted the names of six major donors for peerages, including three financiers: Sir Michael Hintze, who has given £4.5m to the Conservatives; Michael Spencer, who together with his company has given about £7m; and Peter Cruddas, who has donated £3.4m.

At least two more donors – David Ross, the Carphone Warehouse founder who arranged Johnson’s £15,000 holiday in Mustique in 2020, and Stuart Marks, a technology entrepreneur – have been tipped for a peerages in his resignation honours list. The list has been expected for some time, but it appears to have been held up during the vetting process, with Sunak facing calls from Labour to block it.

There has also been a growing trend of big donor peers being given jobs as ministers. Most recently, Liz Truss requested a peerage for Dominic Johnson, a former party vice-chairman who has given more than £300,000 and was the business partner of her then business secretary, Jacob Rees-Mogg. He was subsequently appointed as a trade minister, a job he then retained under Rishi Sunak.

At least six big donor peers have been given government jobs in the last decade, including two schools ministers (Theodore Agnew and John Nash), a Scotland Office minister (Malcolm Offord) and a business minister (Jonathan Marland). Dolar Popat served as a government whip.

The 274 peers who take the Conservative whip include those on a leave of absence but intending to return. However, the total does not include two more major donors put forward for peerages by David Cameron – James Lupton and Jitesh Gadhia, who are now non-affliated but often vote with the party bloc.

Three more donors given peerages by the Tories since records on party funding began in 2001 – Robert Edmiston, Michael Ashcroft and Irvine Laidlaw – have retired, meaning they still get to keep their titles without sitting in the House of Lords. In total, at least 40 Conservative donors have been put forward for peerages since John Major’s time in office.

The Conservatives have long argued that peerages to donors are given on the basis of their other achievements including business successes and charity work. A Conservative party spokesperson said: “Peerages are for contributions to civic life and also a willingness to further contribute to public life as a legislator in the second chamber.

“It is wrong to criticise individuals being honoured just because they happen to have supported or donated to a political party. Donations should be transparent, but that is not an excuse to knock people for broader philanthropy, enterprise and public service. Volunteering and supporting a political party is part of our civic democracy.”

House of Lords appointments commission guidance says the key criteria when considering the vetting of political donors put forward for peerage is their other work for the party.

“The overarching consideration for commission members should be whether the level of donation is matched by other work done for or on behalf of the party. In other words, would this be a credible nomination even if donations had not been made?” the guidance says.

Research in 2015 by the University of Oxford academics showed that statistically it could be said that the “relationship between donations and nominations [for peerages] has been found to be significant”.

Duncan Hames, the policy director of Transparency International UK, said: “We are of the view that political party leaders shouldn’t be nominating and effectively appointing members of the House of Lords. Their need to raise funds for their political campaigns creates a serious risk of corruption when they are also in a position to be able to offer that kind of patronage.

“We have a House of Lords that is already full and we also have a process by which people can be chosen because of their expertise and merit via a House of Lords appointment commission. There is no need to continue this arrangement which is bringing British politics into disrepute.”

Hames highlighted the resignation honours lists of Cameron and May, plus expected ones from Johnson and potentially Truss, as sources of nominations of major donors. “Resignation honours are not a constitutional obligation. It is an excess that has been exploited in recent years and the faster we turn over prime ministers, the more often it happens,” he said.

With increasing scrutiny of the House of Lords, particularly in light of the investigations into the Tory peer Michelle Mone, Labour has made clear it would abolish it and is consulting on replacing it with an elected second chamber. The party has also put forward donors for peerages but Keir Starmer, the party leader, has said Labour would get rid of the “indefensible” second chamber if he were in charge.

Jess Garland, the director of policy and research for the Electoral Reform Society, said it was “questionable that peers who are personally appointed by the prime minister are more independent and less partisan than someone elected by the public”.

She said: “Political patronage does not create independence of thought and expertise, and this is especially true when a vast number of appointees are party donors and friends of the prime minister of the day. It is the structures and culture of the chamber that matter most and these can be built into an elected upper house.

“For instance, a proportional electoral system, such as the single transferable vote (STV) already in use in Scotland and Ireland, would encourage a diverse range of representatives, more independents and a greater range of parties represented. An elected chamber can also be an expert and independent body and we can rely on the public to make those choices rather than departing prime ministers.”

Anneliese Dodds, the Labour party chair, said Sunak had “delivered sleaze, scandal and cronyism”.

“He is too weak to stand up to the energy companies, his home secretary or his backbenchers. Does anyone truly believe he can stand up to those who bankroll his party?” she said. “Labour will replace the unelected House of Lords with a democratically elected second chamber to restore trust in public office and end the revolving door between Conservative donors and positions of power once and for all.”

Impressive on “Natural Wonders” but poor on “Peace and Quiet”

The Daily Telegraph released a list of the top ten counties in England – and it is no surprise that Devon was far and away at the top of the list. Devon amassed a score of 828 points which meant an impressive 79 point lead beyond second place Cumbria.

Jake Holden www.devonlive.com

The list was based on ‘science’ as each of the 48 counties was compared across 33 criteria over four main categories: ‘Natural Wonders’, ‘History & Culture’, ‘Luxuries’, and ‘Peace & Quiet’. Devon came in at the top of the ‘Natural Wonders’ category and third in ‘History & Culture’.

The top ten were: 1. Devon, 2. Cumbria, 3. North Yorkshire, 4. Somerset, 5. Cornwall, 6. Kent, 7. Hampshire, 8. Greater London, 9. Norfolk, 10, Dorset.

Devon boasts an impressive 369 points to win the ‘Natural Wonders’ category thanks to, The Telegraph reports, two national parks and five AONBs, 13 Blue Flag beaches along its 495km of coast (this alone meant 46 points, second only to Cornwall). Nine RSPB reserves, an RHS garden and a vast 9.9% woodland coverage across the county mean, as the Telegraph says, Devon: “Simply put, it has everything.”

In the next category ‘History and Culture’ Devon secured third with 212 points. The list says there are 177 museums and galleries in the county, 34 National Trust listings, 13 English Heritage properties. In Exeter alone there is the beautiful Cathedral as well as Premiership Rugby to enjoy. Greater London managed to top this category with 323 points.

Devon was still ranked pretty well for the ‘Luxuries’ category coming in at seventh with 98 points. There are 4 Michelin-starred restaurants which lend themselves to this score as well as two 5 AA Red Star hotels: Gidleigh Park in Chagford and Bovey Castle in Moretonhampstead. Greater London also won this category, however, with 153 points.

In the final category ‘Peace & Quiet’ Devon did not do so well coming in at 24th with 79 points. This particular category was based on population density, the number of Certified IDA International Dark Sky Parks and Reserves and bonuses for having smaller towns and airports and no motorways. Tourism has made Devon a busier place so even the best county in England cannot be entirely perfect.

Given what the world has been through in the last three years, it seems curious that, in some places, there seems no great sense of urgency about the spike in Covid cases in China. The parallels, superficially at least, with the early stages of what we came to know as Covid are striking.

Editorial www.independent.co.uk 

The epicentre of the surge is China. A principal conduit to Europe is via northern Italy and public health authorities outside are unsure how to respond. As in the original outbreaks, Italy and China’s immediate neighbours are imposing travel restrictions on visitors from China quickly, and the United States has followed suit. However, most of Europe – including the UK – is taking longer to respond.

The danger is that this does indeed turn out to be a rerun of the mistakes made in January, February and March of 2020, and the UK imports a potentially deadly disease almost absent-mindedly. Early in 2020, the scientists in the Sage advisory committee eventually took the view that it was too late to stop the infection spreading because it was already circulating internally.

In due course, that advice was to change, and eventually bans on flights to or from China and testing requirements for most of the world became mandatory. Such tests as have been undertaken suggest very high rates of infection among visitors from China, as is to be expected given the rapid spread of Covid after the sudden move out of lockdown in the country. With exponential spread, they could add unhelpfully to the queues for treatment.

The question now is what is being imported. If it is the same mix of variants and subvariants in the UK already, the concerns are lessened. The main consequence, though, would still be unwelcome – an increase in the incidence of the disease and a corresponding increase in the pace of hospitalisations, long Covid and fatalities. At a time of obvious extreme pressure on the NHS, some controls on visitors from high-risk countries, mainly China, would be in order.

There seems good reason to impose some system of testing and “vaccine passports” now at airports, both to slow the import of the existing Omicron variants, and, more crucially, to monitor for the emergence of more variants of concern. Indeed, there should be more precautionary and voluntary random testing of schoolchildren and adults to make sure the authorities can be prepared for future outbreaks, and that any individuals carrying or in contact with high-risk viruses can be traced and protected from passing it on. Sewage testing can also provide early warnings. There is no room for complacency, whatever the presentational difficulties for politicians.

The ruling assumption seems to be that the Chinese, like everyone else, are suffering from a relatively mild Omicron variant; but we need to know for sure, and we don’t. We need to find out.

Perhaps a more lethal, infectious and vaccine-evasive iteration of the coronavirus has already reached Britain or elsewhere. If so, then the sooner it is discovered, the better. If not, then we should ensure that it is kept out of the UK for as long as possible – and a testing regime is one of the best ways of doing so. A further push to get more people to take the new bivalent vaccine booster would also be prudent.

At the moment, it’s hard to know which is the more worrisome – the epidemic of anti-vaxxer misinformation or a new variant. Our defences need a boost, and so does reliable public information. Those who deliberately spread lies and confusion should be confronted and social media platforms should moderate their propaganda.

In the modern world, no virus can be contained for long, but its spread can be slowed. The alternative, as we know from experience, is not the gradual return to normalcy we’ve experienced in 2022, but a far more draconian regime of social distancing next year.

Socially and economically, it is difficult to see how Britain can support another period of extensive lockdowns, though it may be left with no alternative. This is a moment to apply the precautionary principle, and quickly.