Sixth series, episode 6

All six series are available here on the HebWeb.

In this late April episode, George Murphy writes, 'In this episode, I write about a major and minor medical crisis, both of which took my mind off a major crisis in the middle east and minor shenanigans at home. On the medical front, I was thankful for the care and skill of NHS workers, and couldn't help wondering what the costs for treatments would have been in other countries. I was also grateful to receive a letter from The House of Commons on the continuing Walshaw Moor saga.' 

Life support

Someone close to us nearly died. Her peanut allergy flared up after she was given a bowl of a crunchy nut cereal to eat, following an overnight sleepover with friends. We'd told her she couldn't go there unless she took her EpiPens in her bag. Fortunately, she'd previously shown a close friend how to use them. But EpiPens only slow down the impact of the misnamed allergy.

She was rushed by ambulance to Calderdale Royal Hospital and, when she didn't respond to treatment, another ambulance sped daughter and mother to the Children's Hospital in Sheffield.

She was put on a life support machine.

After two days and nights, her lungs returned to full functioning. When she eventually came to, she calmly explained female physiology to her mum, and the role of each tube that had been life-savingly attached to parts of her body.

Man down

After an extreme emergency, the mundane seems marvellous. Next day the sun shone and even the EDF meter man turned up.

Five times I'd arranged for our energy provider to upgrade our meters. Twice we wasted afternoons waiting for Meter Man. Once they paid us £40 compensation. But, when I booked more visits on the EDF app, they mysteriously disappeared. Till on this fifth time of asking, the engineer arrived! It was time for PW to take over.

I strolled off to meet my son for our usual Tuesday lunchtime rendezvous. After the drama in Sheffield, a routine day in Hebden was just the ticket.

An hour later, returning home, I paused under the pink blossoms across from the White Lion to take a call from PW. Meter Man could not turn our hot water back on. As I reached the corner of our street, she rang again. She said, "He wants you to hurry."

I was about to respond, but swerved off the pavement to avoid a window cleaner and his gear and took to the road. I rounded a tree island whilst lifting my phone to my lips and then I tripped over a 2 inch rim of tarmac, a remaining part of the original road surface, the rest of which was scoured away by the 2015 flood.

I toppled with such force that I instinctively threw my hands out just in time to save my chin and nose from a damaging collision, although my phone got bashed. The mobile kept ringing in a bossy manner, but when I tried to reach out for it, I couldn't lift myself up.

It seemed that nobody had witnessed my fall. So, after a while, I shouted a slightly abashed "Help!" to the street. When no one appeared I tried again. More forcefully: "HELP!!!

After which, a stonemason appeared, closely followed by the window cleaner. They took me home with my bag, my bashed about phone and a swelling, the size and shape of a half deflated party balloon, where my slender, but serviceable left wrist used to be.

After thanking my rescuers, PW asked me, "Can you wriggle your fingers?"

I wriggled them.

"Well, you've not broken your wrist then," she said, emphatically.
The EDF man offered a second opinion. "Yes, It's just a big soft bruise."

Seven hours later, in the Minor Injuries Ward of Halifax A&E, X Rays showed I was the owner of a multiple fracture of my left wrist.

I'd need an operation.

It wasn't all bad news. Home again, with my wrist in a pot and my arm in a sling, I prodded a button on the boiler with a finger of my good hand and our hot water whooshed back to life.

Hey Mango!

If I hadn't been looking at my phone I might have avoided our death trap road. In the great flood of 2015, the community of Hebden Bridge, and good people from near and far, helped us to recover. Except for our landowner. Let's call him Mr Bell. Whenever we rang him he didn't answer.

So I contacted his colleague Phil, the boss of Mango builders, who'd rebuilt an old mill which had fallen on bad times and transformed it into a handsome three storey terrace. I asked whether his business partner and landowner would repair the road surface. To which Phil confidently replied, "No chance."

Then he bragged that when people asked him how he had done so well in business, he said it was due to turning down pleas for support … such as the one I was making.

In the decade since the Boxing Day flood, three people have tripped on the remaining two inch rim of tarmac. I was number 3.

Having only one functioning hand has been tricky, tearing toilet paper requires two hands, dressing is quite distressing, tying laces and locking doors are impossible, reading newspapers and books is tricky. All of which made me wonder how people manage after minor injuries if they haven't a PW to help them.

Scrolling

Lying in bed, nursing my arm, feeling sorry for myself and sporting an impressive bruise the colour of newly demoted Burnley's soccer kit, I copped a snippet of a podcast by two Torygraph reporters, who wondered why Keir Starmer was so unpopular, despite being a better PM than recent Tory premiers.

Taylor Black influencer, addresses MAGA voters:

"You didn't care when he bragged on tape about grabbing women by their pussies, or when he called neo Nazis in Charlottesville 'very fine people'.

"You didn't care that he asked Russia to hack Hillary's emails or that he shook Putin's hand and told him to his face that he would take his word over our own intelligence agencies.

"You didn't care that he tried to trade military aid to Ukraine in exchange for dirt on Joe Biden, you had no problem with it when he suggested that Americans inject themselves with bleach to cure COVID.

"You didn't care when he incited a mob to storm the Capitol on January 6th or when he pardoned all of the rioters, including the ones who beat cops with flagpoles.

"You didn't care when he took boxes and boxes of classified documents to Mar-a-Lago and stored them literally next to a toilet.

"You didn't care when a jury of his peers found him liable for sexual abuse or when he was convicted on 34 other felony counts.

"You didn't care when he called dead American soldiers suckers and losers.

"You thought it was funny when he called a female reporter "Piggy" on Air Force One for asking about the Epstein files and when he mocked a disabled New York Times reporter on stage.

"You didn't care when he suggested that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating people's pets, nor when he instructed U.S. military to shoot protesters in the legs

"You loved it when he started floating the idea of a third term, even though that's illegal.

"But where you draw the line is him posting an AI generated photo depicting himself as Jesus Christ! That's the line for you??? … Oh … OK???!"

Anthropic Mythos

I thought it was dumb of the new UK Ambassador to the US to speak openly to a group of 6th formers about his take on the political climate back in February, but I regret even more when one of the pupils leaked his confidences to the FT. Presumably a parent told their kid that now was the best time to spoil the effect of the king's visit and weaken Starmer's position? But what was the moral lesson they might take from it?

Perhaps soon these leaks and smears will all be made public anyway? The Anthropic company has revealed that its Mythos programme is able to hack into 'every major operating system and web browser.'

Discovering this capability, the company decided to share its program with trusted corporate bodies, including Microsoft, Meta, Google and Apple, plus government agencies such as the UK's AI Security Service and triggered a rushed meeting between the US Treasury and the chief executives of America's largest banks. Then it turned out that the US government was already using the program for its homeland security files.

As John Naughton in The Observer observed, "Like much else in Trumpland, you couldn't make it up."

When Mandy was handy

Watching events in the Commons, I thought Braverman got her tactics wrong. She should have stuck to deriding the choice of the Prince of Darkness as an ambassador. Instead, she accused Starmer of lying. Then Robbins said he really hadn't passed on the advice from the secret service. Then the PM's private secretary Cat Little confirmed the PM was innocent because she'd kept an exact paper trail of events, which I read on the civil service journal.

Although people don't mention it now, Mandelson who was one of the architects of New Labour and a former Business Secretary was seen as a clever move by those on the Blue Labour flank of the party. On the far right, Farage and others thought it was an astute move.

Mandy was useful when helping Starmer to lessen Trump's tariffs. And the day after Starmer charmed the manbaby President by passing on an invitation to visit the king, Vance and Trump attacked Zelensky in the Oval Office in front of the world's media. It was Mandelson who advised the Ukrainian President to repeat his thanks to America and Trump in an interview on Fox News.

For peat's sake!

I received a letter from our MP, in which Josh Fenton Gill shared his thoughts on the proposed Calderdale Energy Park. After noting that he was acutely aware of the climate emergency and the need for more renewable energy, He wrote,

"However, I am increasingly persuaded that such a large development on protected peatland would be too great a cost to our natural environment, and actually detrimental to our net zero ambitions. Peat plays a vital role in absorbing carbon … As has been said by government ministers, 'our peatlands are this country's Amazon Rainforest - home to our most precious wildlife, storing carbon and reducing flood risk.' "

Josh enclosed a letter to Ed Milliband, dated 30th March, following the recently updated National Policy Statement for Renewable Energy Infrastructure (EN-3) relating to building on peatland.

"As you know, the importance of our peatlands is clear. They are a key carbon store; with soil disturbance releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, and they also provide a crucial habitat for many flora and fauna with changes impacting the species and the hydrology and biodiversity of the area beyond …The issue of building on peatland is particularly pertinent in my Calder Valley constituency where there are proposals for building a large onshore wind farm on the peatland of Walshaw Moor. With Natural England's peat map identifying areas of deep peat of up to 200 centimetres in depth, many of my constituents are understandably concerned as a result, that such developments may cause irreversible damage to our peatland.

"I am therefore pleased that following the Government's consultation on the National Policy Statements, the updates to the EN-3 guidance recognise the importance of all peatland and not just deep peat, and sets out that applicants are not only asked to rule out other locations before citing developments, but to justify the need for sighting on peatland.

"This follows the steps that the government has already taken to ensure that deep peat and peatland are recognised as important landscapes and are better protected, with the definition of deep peat revised to a depth of 30 centimetres or more and a ban on burning on deep peat. I am therefore also pleased that updates to the guidance underline our commitment to decarbonizing our energy sector while protecting our landscapes and habitats, making it clear that is possible to do both.

"However, it is crucial that there is consistency across government departments about the importance of these landscapes, particularly when approving infrastructure developments. While EN3 guidance is therefore welcome, it does however leave ambiguity and room for subjectivity in planning decisions that are made, when I would therefore welcome any further clarifications that you're able to provide on:

1. The extent to which applicants must prove they have considered and ruled out other sites before proposing a development on peatland.

2. How the justification of the need for infrastructure to be sited on peatland will be assessed; and
3. Under what circumstances would the building of infrastructure on areas of deep peat be approved given the EN-3 guidance."

All of which I found reassuring, although it might not persuade local voters in time for the local elections, unless Ed Milliband states that the planning decision must fully comply with the new guidance on peatlands.

I'm reading …

Apparently, after noting my discussion on the decline of reading in the last episode, I was delighted to be given a well-received debut novel that I'd managed to miss…

Murphy's Lore, the book, is available to order here

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