My first experience of an NHS hospital was in 1953 when at the age of six I had my adenoids removed. My concerns then were having the mask placed over my face to give me the anaesthetic and to find that I was having to eat off a tin plate rather than the china one I was used to at home. I have never had any complaints about the NHS treatment I have received and recently during the pandemic I had to go twice to the local hospital for a non covid complaint. Over the years I have also been treated in a private hospital occasionally paid for by the NHS. . In this era of modern technology it seems to me strange that the NHS is still being run along the same lines as at its original conception in 1948 when just after the Second World War things were entirely different. I am surprised that it is still being essentially funded out of general taxation when no more than 60% of the population pay income tax. National Insurance is really income tax under another name. How many so called reforms have been attempted over the last seventy years? and to what avail ? As Nigel Lawson once said thirty or so years ago : The NHS is the new religion. No Conservative government will ever be able to introduce the reforms needed due to the opposition from the Labour Party and the NHS unions. The dreaded word beginning with 'p' and ending with 'e' will be thrown at the party for even the most modest of suggestions. You could spend 200 billion on it tomorrow and that still would be not enough. I think it was Stanley Baldwin who once said : Do not meddle with the National Union of Mineworkers,the Vatican or the Brigade of Guards. To that list may be added the NHS.

Boris Johnson is no different from any other politician except perhaps you can tell when he is lying. Did not all of our politicians lie when they specifically said they would accept the 2016 Referendum result and having triggered Article 50 then set about trying to overturn the electorate's decision? At the end of the day unless the Conservative Members of Parliament do what they did to Margaret Thatcher Boris Johnson's fate will be settled in 2024 by the British electorate and not by journalists and others expressing their personal dislike of the Prime Minister.

All I am trying to say is that as of now when the Queen took her Coronation oath she promised to govern the United Kingdom of Great Britain i.e.England,Scotland,Wales (G B) and Northern Ireland as one union and that she could not sign any Act dissolving that Union without breaking that oath ? Do you not agree? In addition England, Wales and Northern Ireland each have an interest in the severing of such a union. Who is to speak for them ? And we do not know that if there was such a separation whether Scotland would want a monarchy. Its leaders in the SNP are probably in the main anti royalist and secular.

We all know that since 1998 when the Scottish Parliament was set up more and more powers have been devolved.. Proportional Representation was included on the assumption that no one party would gain overall control in that Parliament and we can now see that that assumption was false as the Labour Party has been almost completely wiped out there and since 2015 has had only between one and seven seats at Westminster. The 'once in a life time 2014 Referendum' has continued to feed the SNP beast which now looks unstoppable. The dissolution of a 300 year + union will take at least twenty years. I would suggest although I am no expert in Constitutional Law that it cannot happen during the present Queen's lifetime and that she could refuse to sign any such Act of Dissolution as she would be breaking her Coronation oath which when asked by the then Archbishop of Canterbury to 'solemnly promise and swear to govern the Peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland etc/' her Majesty replied :'I solemnly promise so to do'. The question is this : Is the Scottish government as presently constituted prepared to create a Constitutional crisis which affects the rest of the United Kingdom?. Legal challenges would be fast and furious unresolved for years by which time Nicola Sturgeon might well be a footnote in Scottish history.

Maybe we should be just grateful we did not live during the Spanish Flu epidemic 100 years ago. Then 228,000 passed away in the U K many of whom had just returned from the First World War. There was no National Health Service and no cure for many illnesses which during the last century are now treatable. Tragic though that was at least they were spared the hourly news bulletins of how many had passed away that day, how many lives had been ruined by the government's incompetence and how we could have done much better had we adopted this course of action rather than that.

It seems to me that the SNP is having a field day simply because the three Unionist parties in Scotland are more concerned about their own internal policy differences with each other. For the nationalists separation is the be all and end all of their existence ;for the unionists a secondary consideration. Over the last twenty years successive governments have devolved more and more powers to the Scottish Parliament but that was the thin end of the wedge and once the SNP got into power it was only a matter of time before full independence would be demanded. As Alex Salmond once said : The Scottish Lion has roared.! Ever since the unionist case has been completely paralysed. A classic case of divide and rule.

Biden's polling seven million more votes than Trump is mostly accounted for by two states that are now heavily Democrat - California (5 million) and New York (nearly 2 million). These two states provide 84 votes in the Electoral College. Trump came close to winning in Arizona,Georgia and Wisconsin. Had he carried these three states the Electoral College would have been tied 269/269. The Republican Party has lost the overall national vote in seven of the last eight Presidential elections. Trump's behaviour since the November election coupled with the storming of Capitol Hill on the 6th of January has been shameful but because the USA is so divided now there has not been a consensus on whether he should or should not have been impeached. At a time when Biden is forming his administration Trump's trial is going to prove a distraction and at present it does not look as though there will be 17 Republican Senators voting for conviction. That will be enough for the former President to claim vindication. The result could be a split Republican Party unable to challenge a Democrat agenda which will increasingly move to the far left and be implemented in full by President Kamala Harris once the 25th Amendment to the Constitution has been enacted removing President Biden' due to his age, infirmity and increasing signs of dementia..

Found it ! Daily Mail 20th May 2020 'Number 10 disowns Therese Coffee over scientist claim' !

I think there was something earlier than that - May or June may be and do do with lack of PHE etc.

Was it not Therese Coffey who said fairly early on in the pandemic that others e.g. PHE might be partly to blame for the failure to produce the necessary health equipment etc. at the hospitals and may well have been sidelined because of these comments ? Please remind me.