Cranky

Generating electricity since 1889

Many of Hafal's clients - both users and carers - suffer disproportionately from increasing fuel bills. This is because many of them have low incomes and therefore heat and light represents a substantial proportion of their unavoidable expenditure. It costs just as much to keep warm whether you are rich or poor.

So what about the current hikes in fuel bills which the press and politicians are so exercised about?

I won't enter the debate about whether an enforced price freeze would be sensible or effective - you can't do anything about it right now.

Shopping around for cheaper prices is worth doing although there is some doubt about whether that is wise during the time when suppliers are matching each others rises; if you go for a variable rate you may just find that your new supplier puts up prices a few days later.

Certainly worth looking for a fixed rate - quite quickly before all the rates rise - and the best advice on this can be obtained from that annoying but ultimately informative telly consumer pundit Martin Lewis - follow this link. Incidentally this website is what I use for advice on just about anything to do with savings, utilities, etc - it's an excellent one-stop shop.

And don't forget the other side of the equation, namely reducing consumption through insulation, smart timing of heating devices, etc - if you haven't addressed those opportunities quite aggressively already you might be surprised by what you can save. But be wary of very expensive options - you might never recover the cost of new windows or a "fuel-efficient" boiler for example.

The price hikes have also drawn attention to the hidden costs loaded onto fuel bills by successive governments which have got nothing to do with market forces or the wholesale cost of economic fuels but are imposed in the name of the environment - or, to put it another way, as a subsidy for opportunistic businesses and rich people who produce ludicrously expensive electricity using windmills turning unpredictably in the wind and photocells catching those scant rays of sunshine which occasionally strike these islands.

It must be a matter of doubt whether these cranky projects make any difference to global warming in the context of massive industrialisation of the emerging third world economies. But meanwhile poor people are being beggared by the hidden costs - about £130 a year at present and this will rise to £270.

If the cost was worthwhile it would be fairer to raise the money through taxation. But some realists suggest saving the money and bringing forward commissioning of nuclear capacity on the grounds that it's clean, cheap and reliable - and Chinese businesses are queuing up to build the power stations for us.

If anybody feels strongly about having to pay these subsidies through fuel bills take a look at the Soaraway Sun's campaign here.

Institutional Bias

Pen-y-Fal hospital 1851-1996

Disturbing revelations this morning about the running down of mental health services for people with a serious mental illness in England - see the story on our Facebook platform here. Beds have been closed and those that remain are rammed so that patients frequently have to travel long distances to get a bed (extremely distressing in an emergency) or indeed don't get one at all.

Common sense tells us that you always need spare capacity - 15% is about right - because admissions can't be planned: that's the nature of mental illness. But in England at least 1,711 beds have been closed since April 2011 (277 between April and August 2013) - a staggering 9% reduction. And, remember, this is in the context of a protected NHS budget in England.

How can this be? Well, we all know, don't we? Mental health remains the Cinderella service. When health budgets come under pressure managers feel much less ill at ease if they cut mental health than they do cutting other services. And why is that? Not because they are wicked people but they assume rightly or wrongly that their political masters and the public care much less about mental health services.

And yet...

Care Minister Norman Lamb tells us "There is an institutional bias in the NHS against mental health and I am determined to end this". Good for him for being so candid and let us hope he gets the message across to NHS managers that the unfair treatment of these patients has to stop.

So, can Wales smile complacently from the sidelines? I fear not. As in England successive Ministers have proclaimed varying degrees of priority for mental health services and there is useful legislation and many of the right words in the new strategy Together for Mental Health.

But there is nothing to suggest that Welsh mental health services are superior to those in England - indeed it is pretty obvious that modernisation in terms of hospital care lags behind - not the same thing as bed capacity but still a significant deficiency.

One of the weaknesses of the Welsh strategy is that it is light on prescribed levels of service - ie concrete things you can count in terms of what is available. Rather the strategy concentrates on "outcomes" ie targets in terms of improvement of mental health. Nothing wrong with that but it may not be enough to persuade hard-nosed NHS and council commissioners and providers to give due weight to resourcing mental health services.

It is a kind of acknowledgement of this that the Welsh Government remains committed to ring-fencing NHS mental health funding - a crude, unsexy instrument but, in the end, easily the most important part of the Welsh strategy if you are a realist. We badly need to make the ring-fence work effectively through transparent reporting - it remains near impossible to hold the Local Health Boards to account for the ring-fence, something we must focus on relentlessly.

You bet mental health services will be run down if we don't keep right on the case.

Llanelli Beach

The very best thing for my bad back is to keep moving, especially walking and swimming. So off to Llanelli yesterday to knock out 10,000 paces on the sea-front at what I didn't know was called "Llanelli Beach" although I have visited many times before.

Everybody is smiling and happy, not just because they always are in this curious bit of urban Carmarthenshire but because the underdog Scarlets unexpectedly walloped Harlequins the day before in the Heineken Cup.

We had lunch in the Coast Path Visitor Centre - about £5, not bad and any deficiency made up for by the view over to the Gower (left), the coast up towards Kidwelly (right) and the Whiteford Point Lighthouse just visible on the horizon (middle), which I mean to visit some time - it is accessible at low tide, remarkably as it seems so far out when the water is in.

The water is very clean these days and there is commendably little modern detritus on the shore but a huge quantity of industrial debris including furnace clinker and building materials - I liked the rounded "boulders" in which you can see laid bricks...



Swimming for now is confined to my Health Club and in any case never suited to this spot...



Postscript:

Just finished Ban This Filth! Letters from the Mary Whitehouse Archive , a cheap shot editorially (because sneering and dismissive) at the legendary clean-up-TV campaigner but worth reading for what Mrs W actually wrote.

It comes as a surprise to find how flirtatious she was with her opponents in the BBC and elsewhere - evidently a sensuous sort of person who knew what she was talking about when it came to "adult" themes.

Of course much of what she said, especially about homosexuality, looks other-worldly or prejudicial now but her attack on pornography still resonates. She didn't see it from a feminist perspective but rather from concern about the corruption of young people - which is definitely the leading argument nowadays. Incidentally she commanded a lot of support in Wales where the influence of Nonconformism was still strong at that time.

I suppose she represents a classic case of being anti-intellectual and, though she was wrong about many things, she comes out rather well in exposing the self-righteousness of establishment intellectualism.

Interesting that Malcolm Muggeridge took up her cause in the 1970s and was widely mocked for it. He had visited the Soviet Union in the 1930s and reported what he saw - millions of people being deliberately and unnecessarily starved to death. Most soi-disant intellectuals of that time rubbished what he said - and their delusional conviction carried on in spite of the evidence until all but a few "tankies" grasped the reality as the unmistakable news came in from East Berlin (1953), Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968).

We really do need people to challenge the "intellectuals" and one of the qualifications for doing so is being prepared to be ridiculed.

Muggeridge is no hero, mind. He was a spectacularly brazen and persistent botherer of women in his private life while espousing Mrs Whitehouse, Mother Teresa, etc in public...

Dynamic and Flourishing

Two classicists and our Assembly liaison specialist Junaid Iqbal

A great day yesterday at the Senedd where we celebrated World Mental Health Day in style with a crowd of 70 plus including the Minister of Health Mark Drakeford AM, many other Assembly Members, dignitaries and user and carer activists - all there to mark the conclusion of our best ever campaign Lights! Camera! ACTION! run by mental health service users and carers and supported by Hafal, Bipolar UK and the Mental Health Foundation.

The Minister tells me that he is also a classicist (I didn't know that) which prompts me to suggest that with our infinitely relevant and applicable (as opposed to completely impractical and irrelevant) education together we could sort out all the problems of mental health services. He is too polite to point out that he went on to qualify as a Social Worker (and the rest - he's a Professor of Social Policy at Cardiff University) whereas I am still winging it on Horace, Euripides, and a gradually receding recollection of irregular Greek verbs (note to self - must relearn these).

At today's event we presented the Minister with our Campaign Report which points local services and national policy makers to good practice in mental health service delivery across Wales – and tells them what changes we want to see in services. The message is there's more to do – including...

• We want all service users to have an excellent and ambitious Care and Treatment Plan which identifies long and short-term goals in all relevant areas of life

• We also want a turnaround in the approach of commissioners so that all services are planned in response to needs identified in Care and Treatment Plans (as opposed to the other way round)

• We need a Welsh solution for giving control of resources to service users and carers

• We also need to evolve new policy and legislation in the next 5-10 years not only to provide greater empowerment to service users and carers but to address inequalities in all areas of life including training, employment, physical health, housing, etc.



A huge thank you to the thousands of people who took part in the Lights! Camera! ACTION! campaign including...

• The 2000 Members of the partner organisations

• Over 3000 service users and carers using partners' services who took part in local film projects or made individual film blogs at the projects

• Many thousands of people who attended the 22 county events, the launch of the campaign by Health and Social Services Minister Mark Drakeford at the Assembly, and the Royal Welsh Show event

• Over 5000 people who followed and interacted with the campaign via our online social media channels (including over 2000 new followers of the campaign on Hafal’s Facebook platform)

• The 40,000 people who have received a copy of the Care and Treatment Planning guide (provided on request to service users, carers and professionals).

A big thank you too to Emma and the rest of the crew who put on such a spectacular show yesterday.

See more reportage and pictures on the campaign's dynamic and flourishing Facebook platform.

Not sure why I was remonstrating with the charming and blameless lady from ITV?!

Animal Magic

Finally got round to downloading pictures from my holiday last week. I am still angry at missing the great sunshine this summer (how quickly will the rest of you forget how fantastic it was and revert to grumbling about the weather?) and it was a bit of a challenge to find colourful subjects to photograph now that most of the floral variety has passed.

But try these from the beach at Caerfai, a mile south of St David's...





And see my David Attenborough-style film of a heron taking off and landing at the other end of the beach. Twitchers will no doubt tell me it's common but I haven't seen a heron hunting at low tide like this...

Meanwhile back home we are dealing with two other life-forms - cats and the fleas which have infested them on and off throughout the aforementioned torrid summer.

In the old days you could buy a deadly spray from the hardware shop (was it DDT or Agent Orange, not sure?) one idle squirt of which would eliminate the whole teeming mass of nasty insects and they wouldn't come back for months.

Today the odds have evened up considerably. The feeble chemical still legally available (some kind of herbal dilution - so that's not going to work, is it?) is virtually a waste of time (the chemist admits frankly). The best approach is to apply the Dyson meticulously every two days, treat the moggies themselves with one of those spot chemicals on the back of their necks, and let them go around attracting and so killing the remaining fleas.

This takes some nerve as all one's instincts are to banish the cats from the soft furnishings: ours were evicted to the top of the freezer until we learnt the hard way that they can help you clear up the problem...





Postscript:

We learn today that elephants are smarter than monkeys - see the story here - which has surprised the scientists. Well it doesn't surprise me nor surely anybody else who learnt all about animals from Johnny Morris on the BBC in the 1960s and 70s.

Morris (a Newport man) understood that animals are profoundly boring for the most part so he made them interesting by giving them funny voices and a script which he delivered himself. Quite accurately his monkey voice and script made the brutes appear idiotic and annoying whereas the elephants were a bit slow but sage and measured.

Needless to say the Beeb has destroyed the archive of these brilliant shows and we now endure an avalanche of humourless nature programmes in which the animals have nothing useful to say but go about their business rather disgustingly - mainly eating (or having sex with) each other and when they are not doing that they are defecating. I know, that is nature, but I'm turning over.

Onwards and Upwards

Here's a sneak preview of some of the conclusions of our User and Carer Panel in their report at the end of this summer's Lights! Camera! ACTION! campaign (to be published tomorrow when it is launched at our World Mental Health Day event attended by the Minister and other AMs and dignitaries along with a big crowd of user and carer activists - more on this in due course)...

The feedback demonstrates how as service users and carers we feel that while there is sound legislation and policy in place, now is the time to follow through and deliver responsive and empowering services...

• We want all service users to have an excellent and ambitious Care and Treatment Plan which identifies long and short-term goals in all relevant areas of life.

• We also want a turnaround in the approach of commissioners so that all services are planned in response to needs identified in Care and Treatment Plans (as opposed to the other way round).

But more radical change is needed even in the medium term. We cannot simply rely on the implementation of the new law and policy to address the huge inequalities faced by people with a mental illness and their carers...

• We need a Welsh solution for giving control of resources to service users and carers and this is part of a wider debate about access and choice when it comes to health and social services.

• We also need to evolve new policy and legislation in the next 5-10 years not only to provide greater empowerment to service users and carers but to address inequalities in all areas of life including training, employment, physical health, housing, etc

... so they are truly thinking ahead!

There is plenty more in their report about the immediate challenges of implementing the Measure and the Strategy but they are dead right to point out as well that the present legislation and high level policy, sound though they may be as far as they go, will not be sufficient to get us onwards and upwards over the coming decade.

Let's hear it one more time - we will never achieve really excellent services until we leave behind the "take it or leave it" approach and give users and carers choice which keeps providers on their toes.

A Welsh solution is needed for this which will have to embrace more than just mental health services. Current arrangements for choice - really only in social care, not health - are limited and very hard to navigate.

But the universal, legally-supported Care and Treatment Plans offer an ideal platform for choice and control by patients - so why not pilot an approach to patient choice and control in the mental health field?

It would make a change to see mental health services take the lead instead of stumbling along behind...

Obtuse

Some of what I missed this summer

So, I have been back in work for a couple of weeks on light duties, the pain from my back largely relieved but a pale shadow of my former self - not that I've lost a lot of weight but I feel drained of physical energy and somewhat mentally flattened too. Not helped by having to wear a heart monitor for a week - 7 weeks after the previous cardiac event (you wait 2 weeks in England, incidentally).

I am now going to take some holidays which will hopefully reinvigorate me - "rejuvenate" might be a better word as I felt about 100 years old in the worst of the last few weeks, maybe 70 now, and look forward to lowering that to my real age (54) and not stop there but move on down to (let's not be too ambitious here) 35ish? I am optimistic and that will get me there.

There were no surprises when I got back to the office because I've been well briefed but it's good to report excellent continuing progress with substantial new services developing (more later on these) in spite of the continuing squeeze on money in the wider economy.

We've also had our best campaign ever - Lights! Camera! ACTION! - with the last of 22 local events tomorrow in Ammanford and culminating in a big celebration on World Mental Health Day on 10 October where we will return to the Senedd and present our report to Health Minister Mark Drakeford AM along with assembled dignitaries and user and carer activists. See the amazing variety of film blogs and other reportage on our flourishing Facebook platform here.

In due course I'll give you some privileged advance sight of some of what we have found out during the summer but for now a reminder of what the campaign has been about. We have been calling for...

• high quality Care and Treatment Plans for everyone receiving secondary mental health services

• full choice and control for service users on the content of Care and Treatment Plans

• prompt delivery of quality mental health services in response to those Plans and to the needs of people with a serious mental illness using primary care services

• further reform of services which increases service user and carer control over the choice and commissioning of services

• a longer-term move towards full equality in Welsh society for service users and carers including equal access to health and social care, housing, income, education, and employment.

The "Lights! Camera! ACTION! user and carer panel:


It's giving nothing away from our panel of users and carers' final report to say that the great thing about the campaign is how it has been about achieving these things (especially the first two) not just demanding them and making the argument for them.

Underpinning this has been the distribution of a staggering 40,000 of our Care and Treatment Planning Guide - that's in response to specific requests not sending them out unsolicited. And we are following this up with a brilliant training course for users and carers - again, more about this soon.

We may truly find ourselves entering a time when users and carers, as individuals and through their own organisation Hafal and our partners Bipolar UK and the Mental Health Foundation, are leading the way in modernising - revolutionising even - mental health services - let's hope the politicians and professionals can keep up!



Postscript:

The Daily Telegraph has been publishing a series of letters arguing about where the remains of Richard III should be reburied. Much of this has been about the dispute between Leicester (near where he was poleaxed by Sir Rhys ap Thomas and subsequently buried at the time in what later became a parking area) and York (his home territory).

Other claimants include Westminster Abbey (where his nemesis Henry VII - that's Henry Tudor - and many other monarchs lie) and even the RCs have weighed in suggesting a tomb in Westminster Cathedral (home of English Catholicism) on the basis that he was a Catholic. Well, of course he was but proper Anglicans - not the wishy-washy ones around today - would say that the Church of England is the true inheritor of Richard's faith because the Reformation wasn't about a breakaway faction from Rome but a revolutionary continuation of England's ancient church when Rome had lost the plot.

You might wonder why any of them should want to celebrate and dignify this bad man who stole the throne and murdered the Princes in the Tower? Time is evidently a great healer. Perhaps in 500 years time they will all be squabbling about who can rebury Jimmy Savile with pomp and ceremony?

But some of us have longer memories and the Telegraph published this letter in today's paper...

SIR

Put him back in that car park – an appropriately humiliating resting place for a tyrannical infanticide. Thank heavens Henry Tudor won at Bosworth and ended the Middle Ages. We haven’t looked back.

Bill Walden-Jones

You can find it on-line too here along with other letters on the matter plus a contrary comment posted this morning...


The letter from Bill Walden-Jones is perhaps the most obtuse that I have read in a long time. I dare say there will be a riposte or three winging their way to this newspaper ere long.

...which I publish here in a spirit of providing the scrupulous balance which readers of this Blog have come to expect. But you could gently remonstrate with me if I ever write "ere long" other than satirically.

That car park: the cross marks where he was found (and should go back):


Henry VII's tomb in Westminster Abbey, a fitting memorial to this great Welsh king who founded the modern state:


And, lest we forget, here's Sir Rhys ap Thomas' more understated but dignified resting place . You can see him in St Peter's, Carmarthen, but you really need a step-ladder if you want to look the celebrated regicide in the eye: