In the still of the night, at 3.05am this morning, my beloved mother passed away in her sleep in Whiteabbey Care Home. She was at peace.
June Iris Moore was born above a blacksmiths shop in Seaforde, Co Down in the foothills of the Mourne Mountains. She was one of six. Mum moved
I am sorry but this won’t wash. It’s D Day. Normandy beach. 80th anniversary. You are the Prime Minister. If you need someone to advise you whether to be there you are not fit to run this country. Period.
Anyone else making a mental note of those who consider this to be the right time to castigate people who who - in good faith - are having to make the most complex judgement calls to save thousands of lives?
Germany now more COVID deaths in last month than the previous ten. 900+ this past two days
Sweden death rate almost 5 times that of its neighbours
Both heralded - by pro and anti lockdown - for their first wave responses
Be wary of reductionism of armchair virologists
We have just had confirmation that 300 people died in the basement theatre in Mariupol and my timeline is clogged with Putin’s reference to JK Rowling. Twitter is really rather odd place
.
@krishgm
devoted the first 15 minutes of C4 news trying to pick apart the Chancellor’s proposals to uncover what’s missing. Both business contributors were reasonable and contextualised their support. This gotcha journalism really becoming intolerable and tiresome right now
Brexit in its purest form could only have been expedited successfully if the audacity that created it had been maintained. But it is to Theresa May that the Tory party turned. Where we are now is ultimately a product of her personality and limited imaginative range
Doesn’t sound like there will be many more so savour his Low Life pieces while you can. The author should have won an Orwell Prize years ago. No one in all of British journalism comes remotely close to Jeremy Clarke as a chronicler of living on the margins
I don’t know if there has ever, on these islands, been such a vivid, spirited public celebration of the power of song to move and rouse people as that which has accompanied the loss of Shane last week. Culminating today on Dublin streets and his remarkable funeral
Plus: Glen Hansard and Lisa O’Neill perform ‘Fairytale of New York’ as a reflection after Communion.
Can honestly say this is the first time I’ve ever seen dancing in the aisles at a funeral…
If you wondering why the U.K. government didn’t want to reveal volume of vaccines secured and were furious with Scottish government for publishing details, well you don’t have to now 👇
Discussions with
@AstraZeneca
today resulted in dissatisfaction with the lack of clarity and insufficient explanations. EU Member States are united: vaccine developers have societal and contractual responsibilities they need to uphold.
All this opprobrium raining down on DC but the notion that he solely owns this is absurd. We had twenty odd years pre-referendum when leaders could have reconciled the populace to our EU membership and all it entails. It’s surely a multi generational political failure
It should never have come to this. Five days after his medicine was confiscated Billy is in hospital. Not a single paediatric neurologist recommended by the Home Office returned Charlotte’s call. Sickening
Billy Caldwell went 300 days without epileptic seizures. Since his cannabis oil was seized at customs he has had 5 this week.
Now he has been rushed to hospital with mum Charlotte. This is down to home office cruelty, who are sitting on his prescribed life-saving meds. Shameful
Have lost count of the number of journalists who are expressing shock and dismay that Cummings taking an opportunity for account for himself at a press conference when these are the scenes outside his front door Photo courtesy of
@GuidoFawkes
Remarkable how the Rishi branding is evolving, I don’t ever recall another British politician ever being so focussed on cultivating iconography such as this
On vaccines. But while the Johnson government berates the EU - the U.K. has banned the export of over 170 medicines “needed for British patients” included dozens reportedly used in treating covid patients (see article) /2
Chris is our lighthouse now. Our trained watchman. Amidst the hyperbole and complacency there’s Chris keeping his head calmly reporting on what’s going on at the frontline of the NHS. Essential, as ever 👇
How's NHS doing at moment in relation to omicron and other pressures? New thread based on latest data. Note that we prefer to use numbers of covid-19 patients in hospital, rather than new admissions, as two days more up to date and better represents whole picture...1/19
My sense from my regular walks in the Surrey Hills this weekend is that people are moving in advance of government easing of the lockdown just as they started isolating before being told to. Oh and 2 metre distance seems to receding to more like 1metre
I remember reading breathless accounts of how the Chinese built hospitals in Wuhan in a week back in January. Always accompanied by some comment fo the effect that we couldn’t do that here
1/2 Private doctors prescribing £600 per month medicinal cannabis after a £200 per hour consultation is an inevitable if unaffordable development. Access via the NHS remains the sole sustainable route for 99% of patient needs in the UK. It is why
@C4MC_UK
s focused on
Truly a watershed moment for all those who have campaigned for medical cannabis for decades.
@ianbirrell
reports from Toronto on Charlotte Caldwell who will return to the UK tomorrow and declare her son’s cannabis medicine to customs officials
This by
@cjsnowdon
is the best piece anyone has written about COVID denialism. It skewers deniers arguments but does something else that is absent from many such critiques; it attempts to understand the pathology of this denialism and does so convincingly
The United Kingdom has been a guiding light for the pandemic:
1.
@CovidGenomicsUK
sequenced >206,000
#SARSCoV2
genomes, ~50% of all
2. The large
#RECOVERY
trials provided pivotal data for dexamethasone, HCQ, convalescent plasma, more
3.
@ICNARC
is an exemplary national dashboard
The Home Office are suggesting this woman commit to a process of indeterminate length and unknowable cost to secure access to life saving medicine confiscated by customs on Monday morning. She and Billy will defy them and the antediluvian law that denies them will soon be history
The story is creeping inexorably up the news agenda and ever closer to the front pages. Just like the Windrush fiasco will the denouement be dramatic ?
There clearly now does now need to be much more effective government
#COVID
ー19 communication:
> Daily press conferences ✔️
> No more unattributed press briefings ✔️
> Better use of video and infographics ✔️
> 24/7 rebuttal of misleading viral content ✔️
How about this? On 1 Jan all party leaders issue a joint statement deploring online intimidation, acknowledging that their party supporters contribute to it and making it clear that police have their backing to prosecute those making death threats. Who’s in? Please RT
We’re not actually, really, seriously, possibly contemplating a no deal Brexit, are we? Democracy is democracy and all that but there are limits to how much we want to self-harm, surely.
#PeoplesVote
@TomBoadle
. it would be great if
@SkyNewsBreak
sent an alert with updated daily vaccines data as they currently do with deaths. We are at the point where there is good news to counteract the grim
Had
@BBCRadio4
the wit to invite
@cjsnowdon
on to this morning’s Today programme to contest
@jamieoliver
’s many claims to virtue I might just have got up with 🍿 but, for now, will have to run with this slam dunk takedown
It was a privilege to attend Sir David Amess's memorial service at Westminster Cathedral this morning. This is what I wrote about the very poignant event👇
Senior politicians, fresh-faced MPs and the Music Man Project say farewell to
#SirDavidAmess
@hwallop
Twenty odd years ago
@noookophile
shared with me the research he undertook to inform the development of Wetherspoons focused on insights into what stopped people going to pubs (dirty loos, loud music etc)
Charlotte and Billy boarded safely at Toronto at 3am. They are humbled that families from across the UK are joining them at Heathrow. Some of her supporters are getting special access already
This is the product that Billy Caldwell has been prescribed and here the update on the related paediatric epilepsy clinical trial read
@ianbirrell
report on their ordeal here
Just recorded interview outside Home Office for BBC News on Victoria Atkins and the strange case of a Government Minister who can’t speak on her brief because of an undeclared conflict of interest. The story is developing
This is where the access to medical cannabis debate was bound to move on to. A patient unable to access in NHS now faced with three choices; expensive private provision, the black market or growing her own
Without Charlotte and Billy none of this would have happened. The dynamism and publicness of the campaign was key. The prevailing notion that Brexit curtails other significant policy progress now laid to rest