The "Smoke" and Mirrors

An eventful and extravagant weekend in the "Smoke", "Great Wen", or whatever you choose to call England's venerable capital city.

On Saturday we celebrate Mrs Blog's birthday at Welsh-Italian chef-off-the-TV Angela Hartnett's Murano restaurant in Mayfair. We last went soon after it opened three years ago when Hartnett was still working under Gordon Ramsay but she is doing just as well independently. The £30 lunch is a best kept secret - not disastrously expensive and every mouthful exquisite and served by the most professional team. Best dish a ceviche (raw fish marinated in lemon juice) of bream - sensational (or "historic" as Michael Winner would put it).

After that we stroll up Piccadilly to see Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit at the Apollo Theatre with a celebrity cast including Alison Steadman, Hermione Norris, Robert Bathurst and Ruthie Henshall (who gets my Oscar playing the spiteful ghost of first wife Elvira). The production is fine - "workmanlike" is the word I'm looking for - but doesn't fully zing or quite bring out the subtle satire on the self-satisfied toffs which Coward intends. Nevertheless a memorable performance.



On Sunday we motor up from Farnham to the South Bank in order to board the "Golden Salamander", a panelled and mirrored old gin palace with two fine salons hired for the afternoon by my Mum to celebrate her birthday. 60 guests, family and friends from Wales, England and further afield, some of whom I haven't seen for many years, enjoy lunch and refreshments as the stately vessel glides easily down to Greenwich then fights the tide back up to the Festival Hall. The Thames is a grand river and this is a great way to see London in style.



Postscript:
The Great Wen (meaning "boil" or any source of corruption) is a coinage of soldier, MP, and defender of the rural poor William Cobbett (1763 - 1835) whose grave in St Andrew's, Farnham my brother and I inspect on Saturday evening. Cobbett, who served two years in prison for seditious journalism, distrusted paper money, bankers, and other financial speculators; and he blamed tea for weakening the nation because (Public Health officials please look away now) it had replaced beer as the breakfast beverage of choice for the British labourer. He also wrote excellent advice on gardening including this tip for killing slugs - fill a small cloth bag with lime, then walk up and down the garden after dark patting it vigorously so that a cloud of the powder descends on the ground. Any slug touched by the lime is a goner. This actually works. You really cannot afford not to read this Blog.

Quibbles and Nitpicking

Take a look at the new Attitudes to Mental Illness - 2011 Survey Report. This makes interesting reading and, although the authors emphasise some positive changes, the change since 1994 is pretty slight and there are evidently a number of areas where there has been no positive change.

Also, am I being picky or does the report make some rather simplistic assumptions about what is a good or bad attitude to mental illness? For example, it is assumed that it is "good" to agree with the statement "Mental illness is an illness like any other". Of course we know what they are driving at but actually many reasonable people would not agree, believing that physical illnesses as a group share obvious characteristics not shared by mental illness. So how many people not agreeing are perfectly reasonable people without prejudice and not ignorant about the facts about mental illness?

And another one: it is assumed that you are out of touch, ignorant, or prejudiced if you don't agree with the statement "Mental hospitals are an outdated means of treating people with mental illness". Again you know what they are trying to get at but this is sloppily expressed because the most progressive approach to treatment would acknowledge the role of the right sort of mental hospital in the treament of some patients some of the time.

Looking at the statistics suggests to me that younger people may have refused to accept the "politically correct" but actually sloppy and simplistic statements not through prejudice but because they analysed the statements rather carefully. Anyway here are the suspect stats...




Notwithstanding my quibbles and nitpicking this is an important report and gives valuable insights into how we might influence attitudes and behaviour not through preachy condemnation but through information and, above all, promoting contact and discussion between the public and people affected by mental illness.

Diabolical

There is much attention today on Justice Secretary Ken Clarke’s embattled position on sentencing reform. The Sun has him on their front page as a Teletubby living in Laa-Laa Land – ie out of touch with what (the Sun asserts) the public wants to be done to offenders. All this is overshadowing the closely-connected issue of women in prison and the report published this week by the Women’s Justice Taskforce. Allow me to rehearse some of what’s in that report...

Over the past 15 years the women’s prison population has risen from 1,800 to over 4,000 today – an increase of 114%. Most women serve short sentences for non-violent crime and for those serving sentences of less than 12 months, almost two thirds are re-convicted within a year of release. The average cost of a women’s prison place is £56,415 a year. By contrast, an intensive community order costs in the region of £10,000 - £15,000.

The Taskforce was established in 2010 to take a fresh look at an old problem this time focusing on the economics, structure and accountability of women’s justice. Its membership includes senior representatives from the Magistrates’ Association, the Association of Chief Police Officers, probation, prisons, women’s centres, politics, the media and former offenders.

The report makes clear that the current economic climate and the government’s proposed overhaul of the justice system provide a timely opportunity to look again at how women’s justice is delivered. The government's programme to reduce unnecessary imprisonment should be accelerated, and the money saved from the women’s prison estate reinvested to support effective services for female offenders in the community. Many of the solutions to women’s offending lie outside of the justice system in health, housing, and treatment for drug addiction and, of course, mental illness.

Women released from custody having served a sentence of less than 12 months are more likely to reoffend than those who received a community order; in 2008 the difference in proven reoffending rates was 8.3%. An estimated 17,700 children are separated from their mothers by imprisonment and only 5% of them remain in their own home while their mother is in custody.

However, while women’s prisons are funded centrally through the National Offender Management Service, women’s centres rely on a wide range of funding sources to enable them to supervise court orders and deliver services for vulnerable women in their area. The Taskforce heard evidence from the manager of one centre that was reliant on 37 different funding streams, with a mixture of statutory and non-statutory sources, all with different methods of evaluation and reporting arrangements.

There is a crying need to get serious about diversion based on good evidence of what works (and not what the Sun says), to close women’s prisons and to reinvest in mental health and other services.

Hafal’s Link Service has a specialist team assisting Welsh women prisoners in the two main prisons which take women from Wales, Eastwood Park and Styal. Our experience bears out what the Taskforce is saying. No amount of reform of the present system or good will from professionals will make prison an effective, humane, or cost-effective means to deal with the great majority of women prisoners of whom some 30% have a serious mental illness and far more have lesser but significant mental health problems.

I challenge anybody to name a greater, ongoing scandal in our society than the treatment by the state of those 30% of women and 10% of male prisoners with a serious mental illness. Britain’s prisons are anyway a matter for public shame as repeated reports by HM Inspector show. But that we knowingly place people so seriously ill and vulnerable within these dangerous and dysfunctional environments is diabolical.

See the Taskforce's report here and for details of Hafal's Criminal Justice Link Service go here.


Postscript:
If you disagree with me then my therapeutic advice is to deal with your punitive apoplexy by playing the Sun's "Lob a Hush Puppy at Ken Clarke" game here until you've got it out of your system and start to see reason...

Good Will, Flexibility and Patience

Following her visit to Ceredigion last week the microbus has crossed the Teifi and thrashed her tiny air-cooled engine to arrive safely at Guildhall Square, Carmarthen today for my home county's "Taking the Wheel" event.

Hafal's lead in Carmarthenshire Jonathan Willey says: "A display of the work our project provides has taken pride of place at our event today. There's been plenty of refreshments and information on hand for visitors too. Those who've wished to test their knowledge of mental health have taken part in our mental health driving test quiz which has proved a lot of fun.

"Our popular campaign camper van and racing simulator have been on hand for visitors to view and enjoy; visitors have been able literally to ‘take the wheel' as they've raced in the simulator which has been exciting."

Clive Evans, 47, who has schizophrenia and attends the Hafal Ammanford Resource Centre talks eloquently about how he has taken the wheel: “Since moving to Ammanford two years ago my life has changed completely thanks to support from Hafal Ammanford, Sŵn y Gwynt Community Mental Health Team and friends.

“I feel that for the first time in my life people have listened to me and what I need. Hafal helped me put together a programme to make changes which led to me reducing my medication, joining a gym and learning how to use a computer. I feel I’ve come a long way in a few years. Hafal staff have provided me with the support to make positive changes to my life; I now have freedom to move on after many wasted years.”

Yesterday I bumped into colleagues from MDF the Bipolar Organisation and the Mental Health Foundation - our two partners in the Campaign - and we agreed the initiative is going really well. A quick reminder that the Campaign aims to support patients to...

- Take the driving seat in managing their own recovery from mental illness

- Make use of their new rights under the Mental Health Measure

- Make choices about the care and treatment they receive – and who provides them

- Develop and manage services themselves

- Engage with the providers of mental health services so that they can get more involved in planning and commissioning those services

Meanwhile a quick tribute to Andrew Macintosh, his two stalwart volunteers David and Morgan, and the other staff and volunteers keeping the bus on the road. As you can imagine the 22 local events plus two big shows present major challenges in organisation and staffing. Hafal doesn't have any fancy, dedicated display team so all this requires a lot of good will, flexibility and patience - not least when the 21st century car alarm system lets us down yet again while the 1960s German engineering carries on reliably!

Next stop Blaenau Gwent...




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Watteau Jeeves

What do you think of my newly acquired landscape? The frame is a bit wonky but otherwise a fine piece. It is not a French landscape picked up for 8m euros (the going rate for a Watteau) but was easily composed by me today using handy frames positioned by the National Trust which seems to have got a sense of humour at long last (see the step-back view below).


Equally quirky the Trust has installed "talking seats" one of which I tried out today. Some seats apparently have the voice of the definitive player of Jeeves (and campaigner against discrimination towards people with a mental illness) Stephen Fry but mine had that of the naturalist Iolo Williams who talked me through the scenery very personably. See the unlikely story of the seats here.

I also enjoyed an interesting take on the late 18C French political landscape (spot the forced link) in Trinity College Carmarthen's Scarlet Pimpernel with a particularly sinister Chauvelin (those "damned Frenchies'" wily head of covert operations) played by a woman. The Pimpernel also turned out to be female (the character not just the actor) in this version. And why not? The original author Baroness Orczy could scarcely complain that this deviation from her improbable plot stretched credulity any further.

Principalities

Monte Carlo has nothing on this. Today's stage of the "Taking the Wheel" Welsh Rally finds the chrome on our 1964 VW microbus catching the intense sun-light as it glides around the scenic corniche overlooking Cardigan Bay and comes to a dignified halt on the sea-front in Aberystwyth.

Anna Bellingham, Hafal's Aberystwyth-based Training and Development Manager, says: "Our popular campaign camper van and racing simulator is on hand for visitors to view and enjoy; visitors are literally able literally to ‘take the wheel' as they race in a camper van rally simulator which is proving to be a lot of fun. There's plenty of information on serious mental illness available for people to take away, too."

Anna says the message from service users to come out of today's event is one that resonates throughout Wales, that is the lack of move-on accommodation for service users currently having 24-hour support."

Service-user led organisations Hafal and MDF the Bipolar Organisation Cymru have joined forces with the Mental Health Foundation to support the campaign which will empower people with serious mental illness to:

• Take the driving seat in managing their own recovery from serious mental illness.

• Make use of their new rights under the Mental Health (Wales) Measure.

• Make choices about the care and treatment they receive – and who provides them.

• Develop and manage services themselves.

• Engage with the providers of mental health services so that they can get involved in planning and commissioning those services.



Postscript:

Believe it or not the Prince of Monaco attended a St David's Day luncheon in Monte Carlo this March which was also graced by one of our Principality's respected royalty - I mean of course Dame Shirley Bassey. What the Prince made of the Welsh rabbit and cawl on the menu was not reported. Although, come to think about it, just as Aberystwyth on a sunny day looks very like Monte Carlo so too Monegasque cuisine is oddly familiar: Barbagiuan (a cheese'n'leek pastie - no really, I kid you not); Socca (a heavy pancake - what we call a crempog). At the risk of sounding disloyal I wonder if like us they go to France if they want something decent to eat.

As Flat As Any Flounder

Still oppressed somewhat by minor health problems (now including gout in my big toe) I managed to get out on this last long weekend when my friend Nick comes to stay. I gave him some options and he rejects fishing in favour of visiting the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival.

This was in general as annoying as last year (see this post) but the trip was made worthwhile by a lecture by Adam Nicolson about his book on the making of the King James or "Authorised" Bible in the early 17th Century. When God Spoke English makes intriguing reading as the largely forgotten committee which "project-managed" the translation comprised some surprising and far from puritanical characters.

For example, the poor old Dean of St Paul's, John Overall (who went to the same college as me and Nick though he must have worked harder than us we agree), had cleverly managed to woo and marry one Anne Orwell, reputedly the most gorgeous girl in the realm. But he was so busy translating the Bible that she strayed with a passing Yorkshire aristocrat. As the courtiers versed cruelly...

The Dean of St Paul's did search for his wife
And where d'ye think he found her?
Even upon Sir John Selby's bed,
As flat as any flounder

Nicolson also enlivens his talk by comparing the Bible project with the Millennium Dome fiasco which he had a part in as some kind of official historian. But as he admits the comparison breaks down in as much as, unlike the Bible, the Dome was a spectacular waste of time and money without any useful legacy.

Incidentally Nicolson, son of the writer Nigel Nicolson and grandson of the writers Vita Sackville-West and Sir Harold Nicolson, also wrote the excellent Sea Room about the remote and uninhabited Shiant Isles in the Hebrides.

Like last year I'm keen to get away from the self-congratulatory atmosphere at the Festival so we head off to the ruins of Llanthony Abbey, the Dissolution of which was a consequence of the Reformation just as it later brought about the creation of James's Bible. As a good Catholic Nick mourns the passing of this ancient priory but I unsympathetically point out that the ruins are picturesque and the old crypt is now a pub. So Henry VIII wasn't all wrong.



Postscript:

James I also had gout and the illness has traditionally been associated with privilege. However, although the highest incidence of this painful condition in the UK is in affluent Surrey the second highest is... Merthyr Tydfil. So I feel reasonably democratic in my mercifully mild suffering.