RISHI SUNAK: ‘I Gave This Job My All’

Rishi Sunak bade an emotional final goodbye to Downing Street today after leading the Tories to their worst-ever election result – with Keir Starmer waiting in the wings to take over. 

Flanked by his emotional wife Akshata Murty, the outgoing Prime Minister delivered his parting statement as he prepared to head for Buckingham Palace to formally tender his resignation to the King and bring an end to 14 years of Conservative government.

The weather held off – in contrast to when he called the election back in May – as he said he was ‘sorry’ and had ‘heard the anger’ of the country and the ‘clear message’ delivered via the ballot box. 

‘I have given this job my all. But you have sent a clear message, and yours is the only judgement that matters,’ he said. 

‘This is a difficult day, but I leave this job honoured to have been Prime Minister of the best country in the world.’

Mr Sunak said he would resign as Tory leader once a replacement had been chosen. He also paid tribute to Sir Keir as a public servant, wishing him and his family well in their new duties.

After his short speech, the couple – not accompanied by their daughters and with Akshata carrying an umbrella – walked hand-in-hand to a waiting car and were driven away to see the King. 

A statement from Buckingham Palace a short time later said: ‘The Right Honourable Rishi Sunak MP had an audience of The King this morning and tendered his resignation as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, which His Majesty was graciously pleased to accept.’

Sir Keir is basking in a massive general election win following a brutal night for the Conservatives – but Labour’s victory is being dubbed a ‘loveless landslide’ and a ‘super meh-jority’.

With nearly all constituencies having declared their results, Labour was found to have won barely one in three votes across the UK.

Polling experts highlighted how Labour’s vote share of 33.8 per cent is likely to be less than any of Sir Tony Blair’s general election victories in 1997, 2001 or 2005.

It is even less than the 40 per cent vote share hard-left Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn secured in 2017 and lower than the 36.1 per cent David Cameron got for the Conservatives in 2010 when that year’s election ended in a hung parliament.

Rishi Sunak talks about the ‘anger’ of the public and the ‘clear message’ of the ballot. Some people will be relieved that the Conservatives are out of power now, many will not, who knows what goes on in people’s heads these days, but it doesn’t matter because whoever is in power, they all give you false promises, and many people don’t even listen to them anymore.

We are just here to pay the bills so that those in power can squander it and line their own pockets – occasionally they might throw us a few breadcrumbs, but that’s about it!

None of them cares about us, and their weasel words are just from a script, nothing more. A new party is moving into No 10 Downing Street. The mask might have changed, but the face behind it remains the same.

The entry of Labour into power is not a change of administration; rather, it is a change of middle management, and nothing will change.

Some would say that Rishi Sunak inherited a lot of problems from the fallout from Party Gate (the Liz Truss mess), but we could also say the same for old Boris Johnson with the pandemic (if you can’t take the heat, then stay out of the fire!)

‘French Excalibur’ Vanishes

The French ‘Excalibur’ has vanished from a rock it had been wedged in for the past 1,300 years.

The famed Durandal sword is presumed to have been stolen from the southern village Rocamadour, despite it being wedged and chained to the stone 32 feet off the ground. 

The cliffside community is devastated over losing its popular tourist attraction; according to Mayor Dominique Lenfant, the residents feel as though they have lost a piece of who they are.

Police have opened an inquiry, but given the magical sword’s unusual and high position buried in the cliff wall close to the sanctuary, they are puzzled as to how it was removed.

Mayor Lenfant said the town was devastated, according to The Telegraph. 

‘We’re going to miss Durandal. It’s been part of Rocamadour for centuries, and there’s not a guide who doesn’t point it out when he visits,’ she told La Dépêche, a French newspaper. 

‘Rocamadour feels it’s been stripped of a part of itself, but even if it’s a legend, the destinies of our village and this sword are entwined.’ 

Legend has it that the sword was the sharpest blade in existence, so sharp that it could cut through rocks with a single blow and could not be broken.

A myth says it was first given to Emperor Charlemagne by an angel before it was wielded by his nephew Roland, a legendary knight.

Durandal is mentioned in the 11th-century poem The Song of Roland. In the epic, it tells of the sword’s magical powers and says it contained one tooth of St Peter, the blood of St Basil, and the hair of St Denis.  

In an attempt to prevent the sword from falling into the hands of the Saracen army he had bravely battled, Roland is reported to have attempted to shatter it on a rock before his death at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass.

But he ended up throwing it into a valley, where it miraculously flew for miles and ended up getting embedded into Rocamadour’s cliff.

It seems that statues, swords, buildings, countries, and cultures were once beautiful, but now they’ve become cesspits, but that’s modernisation for you, now covered in cement, traffic, litter, and huge buildings that now cover our once beautiful green, and then they call it ‘going green’.

People don’t seem to care that our historical sites are gradually disappearing in favour of turning them into a complex of apartments.

Aside from the tragic loss of an ancient relic, it may be that it is now quite easy to remove after hundreds of years of weathering, water ingress, and such because sometimes quite precious things are protected less adequately by the state.

These historical landmarks are no longer there, demonstrating the general downfall of our civilisation. People no longer honour their past or their forefathers. Of course, there have always been stupid people who don’t respect what they can’t understand, but in the 21st century, you would think that we would have fewer stupid people, but we seem to have more.

When someone takes something that many others have enjoyed for their own gain, it is a sign of the selfishness of our times.

The sword, or a replica of it, of which nobody is really sure, was presumed to have been stolen from Rocamadour, France, as of July 2024, with no known culprit.

Mom Sparks Fury

A mother has sparked fury online when she asked the public to ‘normalize’ charging other parents for their children’s playdates.

In a video on TikTok, she explained in a video that her daughter recently had a friend over to their house – and when the playdate was finished she asked the other girl’s mom to Venmo her $15.

She cited expenses such as chalk and ‘wear and tear’ on the couch, as well as the price of her child using supplies in the bathroom three times.

Since it was first uploaded in early June, the video has received more than 3.5 million views. Many people have openly disagreed with her idea, claiming that it would simply prevent her daughter from having playdates in the future.

But the mum, who posts under the handle @shay.nanigans87 and whose profile identifies her as a ‘rage baiter’ and ‘child support hunter’ – insists it is just a way for families to even out the costs of their get-togethers.

‘Can we normalize sending the other family money for playdates?’ she asks in the video with a straight face.

She continues by describing how she approached the mother of her daughter’s friend for money, showing screenshots of her exchange with the other mother.

In the first message she writes: ‘Thanks for letting Jamie play today, please help out with your share of the expenses for the playdate totalling $15 via Venmo! Let’s do it again soon!’

‘Because I can’t keep doing these playdates if it’s so expensive,’ the TikTok mother explains in her video. 

But the other mother, identified in the video only as ‘Melissa,’ seemed taken aback by the request, asking: ‘Expenses?’

At that point, the mum explains that her daughter used ‘supplies and food while she was here and this way we can do this more often without a monetary obligation on just one party.’

When Melissa asked which expenses she was referring to, the TikToker noted that her daughter had applesauce and fruit, had three juice boxes, played with chalk, used the bathroom three times and sat on the couch – which she said caused ‘wear and tear.’

Ultimately, the frugal mum said Melissa paid her the $15 she requested, and she thanked her.

‘I just received the money, thank you so much,’ she wrote in a message.

‘Hopefully, this will make it easier for us to do these playdates more in the future.’

But many online believed her actions will have the opposite effect – and will wind up alienating her daughter from her classmates.

When you invite someone’s child over for a play date, you assume the cost of what those children do, and it’s common courtesy to do so. What the mother did will only guarantee that the child will never be able to have friends come over again, and will probably most likely get shunned by the other children at school. Parents talk to other kids’ parents and she has outed herself by posting this, the other parents would have because parents talk to other parents.

Clearly, this woman was never taught how to behave politely or with grace. Unless, of course, one is operating a hotel, which she was not, hospitality is always free. You don’t charge for services provided when a youngster stays at your house.

It’s shameful that this woman even charged the mother for her toilet trips! I bet she was running behind the child with a calculator as well.

This seems to be the normal Gen Z entitlement. Don’t they realise that you host them, and then they host your children so it all balances out?

I would not have given this woman anything unless, of course, we had already agreed upon it.

When my children had their friends over, I used to treat them as my guests. Coming to my home was a special treat for their friends. I would make them welcome and my home when they were there was like their home. I would feed them and make sure they were comfortable if they were having a sleepover, and if my children wanted a sleepover with their friends I made sure I could afford it before they arrived, otherwise, I would tell my children not this week.

The mother should have charged her back for the cost of her child’s entertainment and providing friendship to her child, that way they would have been even and then they could have just called it quits.

Yeezy Sued Over ‘Forced Labour,’ And Employees Were Called ‘New Slaves’

Kanye West is being sued for engaging in ‘forced labour and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment’ after his employees were allegedly called ‘new slaves’.

Both Ye and his former chief of staff, Milo Yiannopoulos, are named as defendants in the lawsuit, which was filed in a U.S. District Court and was viewed by TMZ.

The two are accused of forcing their workers, some of whom were juveniles, to work excessive hours while being made fun of with racist slurs and bogus promises.

Ye’s wife, Bianca Censori, also allegedly sent porn videos to staff that were accessible to minors. 

The complainants were hired by Ye to work on his YZYVSN streaming service app, designed to rival Tidal, Spotify, and Apple Music, to promote his Vultures and Vultures 2 albums.

The complaints date back to this spring when Ye started working on YZYVSN. 

A worldwide development group, many of whose members were minors, some as young as 14, and including numerous black individuals, was purportedly employed by him and Milo.

Subsequently, they reportedly promoted a discriminatory work climate and kept making exaggerated claims regarding salary and working hours.

The development group was allegedly promised $120,000 by Milo provided they finished the app, accepted the working conditions, and didn’t voice any complaints.

Ye, however, is said to have then demanded that every employee sign an NDA and threatened to terminate the children if they refused.

They also allegedly required minors to sign ‘volunteer’ agreements. 

Ye’s white bosses are said to have started using racist and derogatory language after that to incite animosity among the staff.

According to reports, they harassed team members because of their country of origin, age, gender, race, and sexual orientation.

Some of them were called ‘slaves’ while others were referred to as ‘new slaves’. 

They were also reportedly forced to work through the night without pay or sleep.  

When Ye announced he was launching an adult film business his wife Bianca then allegedly sent a worker a link with hardcore pornography in it which was accessible to the minors working on the project. 

In the lawsuit, Bianca is not listed as a defendant.

According to reports, the team completed one of the applications and delivered it to Ye on May 1.

However, they claim that he failed to pay them, which prompted them to sue, seeking damages for emotional anguish, unpaid overtime, and unpaid salaries.

I don’t know how Kayne West has continued to get away with what he’s done for so long.

He seems to be a merciless sick guy, and his wife is another sick person who he parades about as if there are no repercussions. It doesn’t matter that he is being sued because he wants attention and power.

Another day, another lawsuit for Kanye, and his wife looks empty, vacant and soulless they both do!

You would think that he and his wife would know that racist or inappropriate sexual conduct is way too taboo in this day and age, but I don’t think that either one of them cares, they’re not exactly known as sane people.

This man parades himself around, parading himself like he’s some demi god, but he seems to think that he’s a legend in his mind. He is a complete narcissist, but if you dig deeper than that it’s much worse, and he believes that he’s above the law, yet no one stops him with his perverse actions that are acted out in public.

This is not surprising for a man like this. Everything about this man and his wife is disgusting. What a way to treat people, and why would anyone go near him? He’s just revolting and has no respect for anyone.

The Longest Journey

After putting her three tiny children into a six-year-old Hillman Minx saloon, a Berkshire housewife who had never travelled overseas set out on a 4,000-mile journey to Baghdad on June 30, 1954.

She encountered a colourful cast of individuals in the weeks that followed, including a former U-boat captain and a group of adolescent striptease performers. She also narrowly avoided death when she skidded off a bridge and fell ten feet into a ditch.

I am aware of all of this because my mother, Mary Tisdall, who was thirty-one at the time, wrote a 22,000-word memoir and nearly a hundred handwritten letters to my father, Billy, an RAF sergeant stationed in Iraq, detailing the poignant and dramatic highlights of her trip.

Their intense love for one another is still evident in every letter and word, even after seventy years.

‘My desire for you is terrific at times,’ Billy penned to his ‘bravest of princesses’ from his bed in an air force base in the desert city of Habbaniya.

In response, Mary — living in the tranquillity of RAF White Waltham, just outside Maidenhead in Berkshire — signed off with ‘all my love always and always and always’ followed by a long line of kisses.

Ten months after Billy had left for his foreign posting, they could bear the separation no longer and she resolved to undertake her intrepid odyssey.

Over six weeks, the couple hatched a secret plan to reunite, which they called ‘Operation Magic Carpet’.

Fortuitously, Mary’s brother Alan was employed by the Automobile Association in London, and it was he who provided her with a comprehensive 72-page itinerary.

Its incredible intricacy was hand-typed. The exact distance covered on the European portion of the journey, from Dunkirk to Istanbul, is 2,163¾ miles.

It also came complete with suggested stops for sightseeing — at cathedrals, castles and mosques — while en route, as if the family were embarking on an educational, three-week grand tour rather than a rather hair-raising expedition to the time-worn sands of Mesopotamia.

Before setting off, Mary dashed up to London to get visas for Syria and Iraq for her and her children, Roger, Susan and Bridget, respectively aged seven, five and two. (I arrived three years later.)

To assist finance the venture, little Roger’s Post Office savings account was emptied and vaccinations and dental exams were hurriedly scheduled.

‘Do I need a tent for crossing the desert?’ Mary asked in one letter to her husband.

‘No, the sand is too soft and there are too many insects,’ Billy wrote back. ‘Instead, you’ll have to join a convoy of RAF trucks and sleep in your vehicle, as the chaps do.’

Fired up by her mission, Mary informed Billy that if he dared stop her now ‘there would be a great big row much worse than any atom bomb!’

With that, she booked a Pickfords van to put all their worldly goods into storage and the family headed to Dover in the car that was affectionately known as ‘Miranda’ to board the night ferry to France.

‘Everything is so different and fascinating,’ Mary wrote to Billy, as Mary sped through West Germany still rebuilding after World War II.

She found it strange to encounter helpful and likeable people ‘who all my life I had been taught to dislike’.

At a hotel in the city of Aachen, one fellow guest who struck up a conversation over breakfast turned out to be a former U-boat commander.

‘When he fondly took Bridget on his knee and played with her teddy bear, I found it hard to picture him in his previous grim role,’ Mary mused. 

‘How is it a man can be so kind yet so cruel?’

Mary later found out that the German owner of the hotel had been captured at the Battle of Dunkirk in 1940 and had spent four long years as a prisoner-of-war in Bournemouth and Edinburgh.

Rather than harbouring resentment, he declared his appreciation for the English, including our cuisine, and kindly provided his unexpected guests with sandwiches to help them get through the remaining portion of their journey.

‘If only people were to travel more,’ Mary reflected, ‘surely it would be a step towards a greater understanding and world peace?’

Things took a lurid twist when Mary visited one evening to a café where a musical troupe, fronted by a compère ‘with a permanent smile’, was performing for customers.

Its other members included a ‘fat, debauched pianist’, an impersonator who had a ‘horrid’ habit of waving his fingerless hand at the audience, and two teenage striptease artistes’ — one of whom had a nasty scar on her forehead.

‘They started playing a gambling game in which the loser had to buy a round of brandy and the winners drink it all in one gulp,’ Mary recalled.

‘It was fun to watch, but I was full of pity for these two young girls whose lives were being used up so quickly.’

It was when they reached Stuttgart that Billy’s superiors finally learned of Mary’s intended arrival. He was informed in no uncertain terms by his commanding officer that, if his wife turned up at the base, she would be sent straight back to England ‘within 14 days at your expense’.

‘The man is a woman-hater,’ Billy raged.

One aspect of this journey that surprises modern eyes is Mary’s willingness to put her children to bed in a foreign hotel room and then go out at night.

Keen for new experiences, she writes how she went dancing with Josef, a travelling confectionery salesman and dined with Werner, a German engineer en route to Zagreb in then-Yugoslavia.

‘I am a curiosity here,’ she reported to Billy, ‘one Englishwoman with three children going to Iraq.’

Mary provided a ride to a scrawny 19-year-old escapee from communist East Germany when they approached Belgrade, despite being advised not to drive at night or pick up strangers.

Hans had been living on his wits for the last three years and had picked up several different languages in the course of his travels, which came in very useful as they travelled through Yugoslavia, then a desperately poor country.

It was here, near Skopje (now the capital of North Macedonia), that Mary’s trip took a fateful turn. Literally. 

Mary skidded and veered off a narrow bridge into a ditch.

‘I remember tumbling and tumbling in the back seat,’ Susan recalls, ‘and Mummy having blood all over her face.’

Additionally seriously injured was Bridget, who was seated in the front on Hans’s lap (back then, seat belts weren’t used).

Fortunately for Roger, his greatest calamity (as he subsequently wrote to Billy with great sadness) was that in the mayhem he lost a treasured toy crane that he had been given for his birthday.

The Tisdalls, shaken but alive, received prompt assistance from the nearby people. Subsequently, a magical carriage filled with twenty-five French vacationers, a few of them nuns, appeared over the hill.

They agreed to take the family and their luggage back to Skopje, but they didn’t appear to understand quite how badly hurt they were. The tour group duly stuck to their sightseeing itinerary, stopping at historic buildings and scenic viewpoints to take photographs as they went along, while ‘les Anglais’, bruised and bleeding, sat at the back of the coach in tears.

It was later discovered that two-year-old Bridget had a broken leg, while Mary required stitches to her face.

Back in Skopje, Mary went straight to the British Consul to ask for assistance. William Maxwell, ‘a real Scottish gentleman’, and his wife, Olive, were ‘kind beyond words’, taking the battered quartet into their home and letting them stay for the next four weeks.

To complete the drive to Baghdad, the Hillman was delivered to a mechanic for repairs while Mary and her children recovered. Maxwell strongly discouraged this, pointing out the bad condition of the roads ahead, Mary’s tendency to break down, and the fact that they would have to travel two hundred miles of deserted desert to enter Iraq.

He suggested that Billy be transferred to Yugoslavia to assist with driving, but the RAF would not approve of this plan. Then, in a surprising turn of events, Mary’s extraordinary journey was discovered by Air Marshal Sir Claude Pelly, the Chief of Staff of the Middle East Air Force.

He was so impressed by her plucky attempt to reach her husband, which — he declared — ‘shows a spirit only too rare these days’ that he made a decisive intervention.

He immediately sent a signal describing her as ‘like a breath of fresh mountain air coming over the hot desert’, and an instruction to ‘see that Sgt Tisdall is reunited with his family’.

Billy was quickly posted to RAF Amman, in Jordan, where the family would be allowed to stay in local accommodation before progressing to married quarters.

Billy turned 36 on August 6, 1954, and Mary and the three kids were finally reunited with him in Jerusalem following two days of delays and rerouted flights via Istanbul and Beirut.

‘The end of your journey is in my arms,’ Billy had written to Mary the month before, and now, at long last, the magic carpet had landed.

What an absolutely beautiful story this is, and what courage and strength this young mother had – this would make a wonderful film.

What a story, what an adventure and the children were no doubt too young to remember it clearly but they were there.

Despite the terrible accident—which might have been far worse—this was an amazing trip and a wonderful experience for the kids. She was undoubtedly committed to finding her true love.

It was a pleasure to read such a beautiful story of strength and love amid all the negativity that surrounds us these days. What amazing memories to cherish. Luckily, common sense won out and they were permitted to be together.

I would love to know more about this amazing woman, and the rest of her life, and the comments that people were kind to her, people she had hated before, I found interesting.

This is the best story I have read this week, considering it’s only Monday, things must be looking up!

Janet Yellen’s Response Is Unbelievable

While America struggles, grocery costs have risen under Joe Biden, and Yellen, who is worth $20 million, said she goes to the grocery store every week, and she claims she doesn’t feel any sticker shock due to inflation.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen surprised an interviewer when asked if she has felt ‘sticker shock’ at the grocery store due to inflation.

Before the election, a thriving economy may increase people’s faith in Biden’s leadership; nevertheless, the problem of ongoing inflation might undo it.

Under Biden, the cost of a normal trip to the grocery store often shocks Americans, resulting in double-digit percentage increases in grocery costs.

Yellen – who is worth about $20 million – said she goes to the grocery store ‘every week’ and isn’t shocked by the prices.

‘It’s sticker shock, isn’t it? Just when you look at shipping costs, those have come down, global food commodity prices have also come down but food prices still remain high,’ said Yahoo! Finance reporter Jennifer Schonberger.

Without even letting her finish the question, Yellen bluntly responded: ‘No.’

‘I think largely it reflects cost increases, including labour cost increases that grocery firms have experienced, although there may be some increases in margins,’ Yellen added.

Yellen added that she expects inflation to come down and says that it will ‘go back to the Fed’s two per cent target’ by early next year.

Since the cost of living has increased significantly in the years after the epidemic due to high mortgage rates and persistently high costs for food and other needs, the Biden administration has announced new initiatives to expand access to affordable housing.

Yellen touted the additional investments during her visit to Minneapolis on Monday.

The investments include providing $100 million through a new fund to support affordable housing financing over the next three years, boosting the Federal Financing Banks’ financing of affordable housing and other measures.

She blamed the continued slow decrease in inflation on housing costs, rather than the administration’s policies. 

In the run-up to the 2024 election, voters’ top concerns continue to be the economy and inflation.

The annual rate of inflation fell slightly to 3.3 per cent in May – down from the month prior.

This is down from a 40-year high of 9.1 percent in June 2022, but still above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target. 

Trump consistently talks about inflation during his presidential campaign. 

With $20 million in Yellen’s bank account, she doesn’t need to pay attention to prices, she just grabs what she needs, throws it in the cart and pays with her card, and this is why she doesn’t have ‘sticker shock.’

This woman is completely and totally out of touch with average Americans. She came from a family of Polish immigrants, who came to America with absolutely nothing. We are what we come from and she should remember that. People are in poverty, but she is not!

Does she actually know how much a carton of milk is? How much does she think she pays? She really has no idea what planet she’s on.

If you want bread for under $2, there are options of course. It might not be whole wheat or 12-grain bread from Bob’s House Of Nutrition, but it’s cheap as chips. However, people don’t want to be feeding their children junk or substitutions.

Most of these people were not born rich, and some of them came from backgrounds where they struggled, but one person who certainly cannot relate is Donald Trump. He has never experienced any type of money issues. He was born rich from his father and he continues to be so. I’ll tell you who he relates to and it’s not you or me, it’s ME ME ME!

A Scorcher Of 31C Today In The UK

In many regions of the UK, temperatures are expected to soar to 31 degrees Celsius today when thousands of festivalgoers go to Glastonbury.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has issued yellow heat health alerts across most of England, while NHS leaders have said the service is expecting ‘major disruption’.

Although it is expected to be extremely hot in certain areas of the nation today, a heatwave with intense heat is expected to pass quickly as cooler weather is expected to arrive on Thursday.

The UK saw the warmest weather of the year yesterday, with temperatures reportedly reaching 29.4C at Herstmonceux, near Eastbourne, in East Sussex.

That made it hotter than Torremolinos on  Spain’s Costa Blanca where temperatures reached 29C (84.92 F) or Kos in Greece with the same temperature.

Campers were pictured arriving at Worthy Farm in Pilton, Somerset this morning in a bid to secure a prime camping spot. 

Global superstars including pop singer Dua Lipa, British rock band Coldplay, and American soul artist Sza will headline this year’s festival. Canadian country music icon Shania Twain will take the coveted legend spot.

Andrea Bishop, a Met Office spokesman, said it will continue to be ‘very warm’ across much of the country over the next few days, though conditions in the West and the South West will be ‘nearer average temperatures’ in the low 20s.

She added: ‘Wednesday is a very warm day for many and we’re going to have top temperatures of 31C.

‘We then transition to fresher conditions looking very likely through Thursday as a weakening band of cloud and showery rain runs east, south-east, across the country through the day.

‘Although it could still be very warm ahead of this, for example in the east or southeast of England.’

The present heatwave, according to NHS administrators, is already taxing the system, and tomorrow’s junior doctors’ strike will make matters worse.

Junior physicians from the British Medical Association (BMA) in England are planning their eleventh strike as a severe wage conflict continues.

NHS England’s national medical director, Professor Sir Stephen Powis, said: ‘This new round of strike action will again hit the NHS very hard, with almost all routine care likely to be affected, and services put under significant pressure.

‘While the warmer weather can lead to additional pressure on services at a time when demand for services is already high.

‘As ever, we are working to ensure urgent and emergency care is prioritised for patients, but there is no doubt that it becomes harder each time to bring routine services back on track following strikes, and the cumulative effect for patients, staff and the NHS as a whole is enormous.

‘People should continue to use 999 in life-threatening emergencies and NHS 111 – on the NHS app, online, or by phone – for other health concerns.

‘GP services and pharmacies are also available for patients and can be accessed in the normal way, and patients who haven’t been contacted or informed that their planned appointment has been postponed are also urged to attend as normal.’

Asked about the impact of the weather, BMA chairman of the council, Professor Philip Banfield, said: ‘In any heatwave warning, if you end up going to emergency departments because of heat, you will be treated as you would on any normal day, you don’t suddenly end up bringing in lots of doctors.

Every time it gets a little hot, be careful, the NHS can’t cope. Every time it’s cold, the NHS can’t cope. It’s summer and yes it will be hot on some days and the NHS can’t cope with anything. Just remember to put on your sun cream, don’t sit out in the sun too long and folks have a lovely day.

There is no longer an NHS. Now it ought to be known as the International Health Service, albeit naturally only Britons foot the bill.

It’s been years and years that we were ‘all in it together’, unless, of course, you’re a multi-millionaire old Etonian who has trashed our world-beating NHS, and our NHS now doesn’t need any excuse for poor service.

This is what we Brits call summer, and seems to have finally arrived. It’s just summer, enough with the hysteria.

Inadequate NHS Care Revealed

Nurses at an NHS Accident and Emergency Department have been caught on film laughing about how they weren’t hitting targets after they admitted one of their patients had already waited 46 hours for care. 

A Channel 4 Dispatches reporter went undercover as a trainee healthcare assistant at the A&E department of the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, exposing the deplorable quality of NHS treatment.

In a documentary shown this evening, nurses were caught laughing about their failure at ‘hitting targets’, as the programme’s footage left an expert in disbelief at the ‘unacceptable’ practices. 

It came as 400,000 patients across the country have had to wait more than 24 hours for care.

The startling show revealed:

Sick patients waiting overnight in the ‘Fit to Sit’ area, with a suspected stroke case sitting in the waiting room for 24 hours.

A man was forced to urinate on a trolley in full view of 30 staff, patients and members of the public.

A dementia patient ripped out their cannula and was left in a room covered in their blood when they were supposed to have been watched over. 

A makeshift ward was set up on the X-ray corridor, which was isolated from doctors and nurses and had no sinks and insufficient plug sockets.

Shocking levels of hygiene, with dirty bedpans, were left by staff without being cleaned up. 

Patients were forced to wait for up to four and a half hours in ambulance queues. Some ambulance crews who could not wait just dumped their patients in the ‘Ambulance Reception Area’ without a proper handover.

A staff worker at the hospital in Shropshire smiled throughout the video when she said a patient had to wait 46 hours, or almost two days, to be seen.

Going through their waiting times list, they said: ‘So… longest waiting… 46 hours is the longest one. It’s meant to be four hours!

‘So we’re not hitting any targets.’

They added: ‘I’d say we have at least like, 40 breeches a day.’ 

According to the broadcaster’s Freedom of Information requests, 54,000 people were in A&E for more than 48 hours, and over 19,000 stayed for 72 hours.

Additionally, the number of patients waiting longer than a day for treatment has increased by 5% from the previous year, with thousands more patients waiting longer than 48 hours.

In one moment, the reporter spoke to an elderly couple who said they had been waiting in the Shrewsbury hospital’s ‘Fit 2 Sit’ area for 30 hours.

A suspected stroke victim had also been waiting for more than 24 hours on a hard chair.

Horrified at the desperate state of the situation, one nurse could be heard saying: ’24 hours in Fit 2 Sit before anything’s happened for her. That’s disgusting care.’

Responding to footage, Professor Alf Collins, Trustee of the Patients Association and former NHS England Clinical Director for personalised care said: ‘It’s dreadful. People waiting just far, far too long.

‘It’s almost becoming acceptable now. It’s almost becoming the standard of care that people expect.

‘Sad to say. I don’t think this is exceptional.’

And Dr Adrian Boyle, President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, added: ‘I don’t think this is unique to this hospital by any stretch of the imagination.

‘The things we’ve seen here today are clearly not just confined to winter. It was a year-round crisis in emergency care.

‘Spending two days in an emergency department is, you know, it’s worse than spending two days in an airport lounge. These are people who are sitting in uncomfortable seats where the lights never go off.

‘There’s constant noise, there’s constant stress. There’s no end in sight. People will miss their routine medications. They’ll be next to people who can infect them with other diseases. You know, it’s just not acceptable.’

An old guy was made to urinate in a pot in front of up to thirty individuals, including staff workers and other patients, in another horrible incident.

After helping him to go to the toilet in public, the horrified reporter said: ‘We’ve got people having to go to the toilet in public in the corridor. It’s not OK. 

‘If that was my family member, I’d be fuming.’

It’s an absolute disgrace, and I’m not sure anyone is going to be saved by anyone in any hospital. We are literally putting our lives in the hands of people who are overworked and fed up – it’s actually disturbing.

Once upon a time GPs worked from home and used one of their rooms as a surgery. Patients waited in another room or hallway, it was never a problem and you always got seen by a doctor. Then everything went downhill when they introduced special buildings to house several doctors and brought in those receptionists who always seem to want to know what’s wrong with you. Well, if I knew what was wrong with me, I wouldn’t need to see a doctor, would I?

For the most part, nurses are now lazy. I have sat in A&E or a bed on a ward while I watched the staff just chatting, doing absolutely nothing. If you want information, it’s almost impossible, and the ward staff don’t take the time to read notes on patients under their care.

Maybe after they got a taste of doing practically nothing during the pandemic, they decided to do the bare minimum.

The NHS is regarded as the world’s envy. It’s not, at all! Even if it’s free, the quality is rather poor and it’s not the finest. However, paying for it would be the other option, and that wouldn’t be much better.

Julian Assange Walks Free

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, was free to depart the UK on Monday after entering into a plea agreement with US authorities about the spy charges that have plagued him for over ten years.

In a court hearing on a small US-controlled Pacific island in the coming hours, Assange, 52, is anticipated to enter a guilty plea to a single espionage charge. Prosecutors will seek a sentence equal to time served.

Assange has been held in London’s Belmarsh prison for five years. WikiLeaks released a video of him being taken to Stansted Airport. After that, he got on a private plane that made a landing in Bangkok, Thailand, for fuel.

Assange has been a wanted man since 2010 when WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents on Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history – along with swathes of diplomatic cables.

In 2012, as authorities circled him for that and over ‘credible and reliable’ sex crime allegations from a woman in Sweden, he fled into London’s Ecuadorian embassy where he remained for seven years in often farcical circumstances.

After falling out with the South American nation’s rulers he was dragged out of his bolthole in 2019 and locked up in Belmarsh while the US attempted to extradite him.

But that legal process ended abruptly yesterday, and WikiLeaks broke the news with a post on X reading: ‘Julian Assange is free!’

In a pre-recorded video filmed outside Belmarsh prison, Assange’s wife Stella and WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said: ‘If you’re seeing this, it means he is out.’

The group said: ‘After more than five years in a 2×3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day, he will soon reunite with his wife Stella Assange, and their children, who have only known their father from behind bars.’

Assange married Stella, a South African-born lawyer who he met when she joined his legal team in 2011, while locked up in Belmarsh in 2022. Last night she posted on X: ‘Julian is free!!!! Words cannot express our immense gratitude to YOU – yes YOU, who have all mobilised for years and years to make this come true. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.’

Both of the couple’s children were conceived during his time at the Ecuadorian embassy. Stella posted a photo of her husband video calling her from Stansted airport on Monday morning on X on Tuesday morning.

Although it appears that he has been granted permission to depart the UK and return to Australia, British authorities have not yet verified his release. For comments, MailOnline has reached out to the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, and the Foreign Office of the United Kingdom.

This is very good news. It never made sense to put Julian Assange in jail in the first place. He presented the reality of what our global governments are doing openly.

The entire situation has been a farce, demonstrating the US government’s retaliatory nature when found to be lying, and in case you haven’t noticed, the Americans can be quite vindictive. They don’t care too much about justice, just getting even, and then some.

Julian Assange told the truth, and he exposed more than just war crimes. He published emails and had proof, and he was persecuted for it, but really, they were exposed because they put sensitive information into emails – not very clever.

He endured unimaginable suffering and has been duly punished for his audacity in exposing high-level wrongdoing.

Lewisham Community Builds Its Own Homes

The average price of a house in the city was £720k last year, which is substantially higher than the average price nationwide.

Too costly for a lot of Londoners, this left a void in the market, which the southeast’s self-build project filled.

Residents of Ladywell, Lewisham, have begun to occupy the 36 price-capped homes in the neighbourhood.

Some rooms in the property, such as the kitchen and bathroom, are already completed. Residents then construct the other spaces with the assistance of self-build managers, an architect, and a carpenter who provides instruction.

And the scheme is proving popular, with the waiting time for a property currently at nine years.

Rory Wakefield, a musician, is still in the process of building his home and is currently working on laying his floors.

A month ago, he paid around £300,000 for his property.

He was excited to become a first-time homeowner and claims to have been a longstanding supporter of the programme.

He said, “I wouldn’t have been able to get a house without this scheme. It makes it affordable.

“I was born and raised in Lewisham, and I would never have been able to stay here without this scheme.

“It is a very positive scheme. They should definitely make more, they need them. 

“The government just want to put up things that make money quickly; they don’t actually care about helping people.”

Being able to construct some of the property himself allowed Mr Wakefield greater creative latitude, which he also liked.

The 31-year-old added, “I want it to look the way I want. 

“I am into the philosophy of building a sustainable space and community. That is why I wanted to be involved.”

The new development is made up of 36 homes and has taken 15 years from conception to completion.

The homes are part of a community land trust, meaning they are owned by a non-profit organisation, which keeps them affordable.

There are several sizes and tenures available for the units, including social rent, part-buy, part-rent, and complete ownership.

Just over a month has passed since Martin Oroyan, 61, and his three kids moved into their part-rent, part-buy property, and he is loving the sense of community it offers.

Although the ambulance worker will not disclose the purchase price, he claims to have spent 25% of the property’s worth.

He said, “We have been involved in this project here in Ladywell since its inception in 2016 and it has been quite an experience. 

“My partner and I were first-time buyers and had been trying to get ‘on the ladder’ for several years.

“Our three boys were born while living in Forest Hill, and we hoped to avoid moving, changing schools, and the general upheaval that implies. 

“Without this project, we wouldn’t have been able to afford living within the M25.”

It’s a great idea, especially for young single people and couples in low-paid jobs who can’t get social housing, and at least something is being done. However, there are plenty of council properties in the capital that are being left empty for weeks, months, and sometimes years without any people living in them.

If councils leave their dwellings empty, then they should be fined the weekly or monthly rental they would be getting if a family lived there.

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started