Had a coffee break with Agnieszka on Saturday at the Verdict cafe in Brentford.. Always a livewire, she works as an emergency medical officer employed at railway stations, like Waterloo. She doesn't suffer incompetent fools gladly and I have seen her in action both with mental patients, as she coaxes them into agreeing to be helped, and with emergency staff who need cajoling to do their job properly. She is very dedicated but her constant concern is that while she will be doing her job beyond the call of duty, those around her do not follow through. The other day she was dealing with a young girl who was in such distress that she locked herself in a gents toilet in a railway station, stripped naked and talked of suicide. Agnieszka spent a long hour talking to her through the door, listening to her distress and to her complaints about being beaten by her boyfriend, and, before that, mistreated by her mother. The railway police wanted to call an ambulance and have done with it, but Agnieszka knew that no ambulance would come, as these days they even fail to turn up for patients with cardiac arrest. She finally convinced some "thick-headed idiot" of a transport policeman to accompany her to an A&E section in the nearest hospital, where she would be sectioned. She knew the girl would not go on her own. Finally the girl got dressed and allowed herself to be escorted to a hospital, but Agnieszka had no idea what happened next.
While talking to her, I remembered that I still had nobody to take to the Ennio Morricone concert at the O2 Arena on Moday 28th November. I bought the tickets last year but Albina was not interested in going with me. I had invited a number of ladies, but all had other commitments. I had been salivating at the thought of going to this concert, with an orchestra conducted by Morricone's son. To hear all those classic film music scores and see some of the scenes enacyed on a screen at the back would have been a mesmerising experience. I reminded myself of the music in A Fistful of Dollars, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, Bugsy, The Mission, Battle of Algiers, The Hateful Eight.... Should I go on? Agnieszka was delighted when I invited her to accompany me. I'm sure that, with Agnieszka, it will be a fun evening.
She has worked for years in various private agencies connected with the NHS, including driving an ambulance. I remember recounting her earlier adventures in one of the chapters in my book, "Hello, I'm Your Polish Neighbour", which I published in 2008. But she said that the service had never been so bad, the pay so low, and the morale in the service so rock bottom, as now. Her landlady wants to raise her rent by a further £100 a month, and she can barely afford to live in her single bedroom flat on her current salary.
This collapsing infrastructure seems universal in England, be it in health, in social services, in schools, in the railways. The coming cutbacks are getting worse. Libraries are closing in many local authorities, just when they may be necessary to provide warm spaces for families and pensioners during the coming cold spells while heating costs rocket beyond their means. Wirral is closing all 9 libraries. Apparently Birmingham Council is facing a shortfall of £80m, and Lancashire £87m. Hillingdon Council (Boris Johnson's constituency) is closing all 3 council nurseries. Hampshire is cancelling a bus service which takes disabled children to school. Recycling centres are closing for several days a week and leisure centres are closing completely. Asylum seeker families with young children are being turfed out of hotels and made homeless, because councils can no longer afford to house them, or moved to distant areas where their kids have to find new schools and new friends. 80% of school heads say they cannot keep to their budgets this year. On top of that, desperate impoverished railway workers, nurses, teachers, postmen and other heroes of covid, crippled now by 10% inflation and increased rents and mortgages, are striking or threatening to do so.
At present, Rishi Sunak is still very popular and even beats Keir Starmer in the latest opinion poll. He made an excellent speech as he arrived in Downing Street and is such a contrast to his two atrocious predecessors. But this honeymoon will end as soon as the austerity cuts come raining down on crucial services everywhere. Sunak will not want to draw onto a new windfall tax on energy giants, like Shell with their £36bn profits this year, even though his much demoted environment minister, Ashok Sharma, is calling for a tax on excess profits. Whatever Sunak will do, the Tory brand is toxic now, and I cannot see how they can recover in the next 2 years before the next election. In fact, the majority of the electorate want elections now, but that can only happen if the Tories implode again. Which they could.
I am just arranging a meeting for the first time between Hammersmith MP Andy Slaughter and POSK Chairman Marek Laskiewicz. Now that Marek had truimohed with such a hufe margin means that he is here to dtay, And I might also go ahead and arranging a meeting.
Disaster! I have just been given a date for my second cataract operation. This time on my left eye. I had been waiting for this since May. The new date is on Monday, 28th November. So bang goes the Morricone concert! What fucking luck! As I still had Agnieszka with me, I offered her the tickets. She was delighted and said she would take our close friend Kasia. Go and enjoy, I told her, and just remember to have a drink on me.
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