Letters to the Editor: The Great Escape

Beware of the long-lived

 

For the last eighteen months, I have been caring for my nonagenarian Mum. She has dementia and cannot be left unattended. She has home care provision, but the gaping holes in the service meant they needed filling in order to end the cycle of hospitalisations in the teeth of the Covid gale blowing through our NHS. So I shipped my bug-out gear round to her place and dug in. 

It goes without saying that the NHS provided me with enough motivation to undertake this task, but if that wasn’t enough, then the council-run care home—situated less than fifty yards from her front door—certainly does.

The mornings and evenings up there are often like Bedlam, with cries for help bellowed out for hours at an end. I have oft witnessed the residents wandering the corridors endlessly for the entirety of the night, with not a sight of staff attending them. And we see the office-window ‘granny parties’ every weekend, as relatives turn up with their kids to ease their consciences. It's soul destroying! 

A couple of weeks ago, I was laid in my slug by Mum's bedroom door when a rhythmic bang, bang, bang rang out. It was 11:30 pm, and—thinking some moron was messing about amongst Mum's neighbours—I got up and went to the front door in order to ascertain where the disturbance was coming from. I could not locate the source of the hammering until I noticed the door of the care home opposite shaking with every thud. I could make out a long-haired figure trying to break through the front door from the inside—by pounding it with what appeared to be a fire extinguisher! It went on for twenty minutes before the resident was led away by staff. "Poor bugger," I thought, and retired to my slug and said a prayer.

The following week, I was sat on the front doorstep in the early morning having a smoke and my first coffee of the day. The sun was shining and Mum had had a quietish night. Life seemed good. But the peace of the morning was shattered by a cascade of mauve-uniformed care assistants cascading from the care home door and bursting in all directions.

Something was up, and I made enquiries of a passing, panic-stricken, care assistant. Some old boy had got out. He was a long-haired, hippy-looking gent—who may only be wearing one shoe—who had got into the garden and made platforms of the garden furniture in order to jump the seven-foot, steel-barred garden gate! He had last been seen by the night staff, and a shift change had revealed his escape to staff.

I said I’d keep my eyes open, but I couldn’t help but think of Steve McQueen and The Great Escape. Indeed, part of me hoped he would make it to the Swiss border, where he would attempt to jump the fence on a stolen Rayleigh Happy Shopper. That would impress the pants off me!

It was not to be. A Gestapo officer had obviously wished him good luck at the bus terminus, and he was returned in the late afternoon, flanked by two policemen. I went to the door and shouted across to him, "It's the cooler for you, mate." He stopped, looked across and gave me a double thumbs-up as his police escort scowled in my direction with a disdain that left me chuckling. I wished I had a baseball and glove to give him.This weekend, he did it again while my brother was here attending Mum. They soon picked him up, though. He’d gone down the pub to see his mates. This time, the home made good its fortifications, and I include a photo of their handiwork.

Care Home Colditz, East Yorkshire

But my guess is it won’t stop him. He obviously doesn’t want to be there. What next? Watchtowers and searchlights, perchance?

So if yourself or any other Columnists would like to volunteer and help me dig a tunnel, or disperse the soil via trouser pouches in the local park, then please get in touch. I’ve started the tunnel under Mum's stove, so the authorities are none the wiser!

Glen Rewston, East Yorkshire

 

Update from Glen

I’m sat with Mum this afternoon. We have not seen a GP or practice nurse for two years, despite Mum being seriously ill during that period. Indeed the only time we might have seen a representative from the surgery was if we had agreed to have Mum jabbed after infection at the local hospital, and before the results of her discharge blood tests were known, back in January 2021! Needless to say, our GP surgery—like thousands of others—went missing in action when we needed them most.

I received the following via text message from the surgery:

Dear Mr Rewston, It is with deep sadness and heavy hearts that we inform you about the death of our colleague, [named] Practice Nurse, who passed away unexpectedly on Friday 19 August. We will all miss her more than words can express.

East Hull Family Practice

I was astonished at this message. And while I might commiserate with her family, we do not know her. We would not support the jabbing aspect of her work either, no doubt! Do I inform them of the unexpected deaths of my work colleagues? Do I inform them of the illnesses of neighbours who unexpectedly ‘pass’ who are registered with their practice? Do I push the ailments incurred by Mum's care workers following jabs? Of course not.

Every patient registered at the practice received this message via the messaging service, which you cannot block—but to what end? The practice has a website, so did they really think a text message was a dignified way of remembering a nursing colleague who collaborated with the surgery’s protocols? Was it some kind of psychological experiment? Why were NHS resources being used in this way? Is this a habit that is proliferating nationally?

I am sure there are many more questions as to their action and the rationality that underpins it. I’m dumbfounded by the episode. I rang the surgery and told them to desist from sending me any further such messages, as I was not interested. I left it at that.

I think it pertinent to make clear that East Hull Family Practice is one of the largest NHS group practices in the city, operating out of three new-build, purpose-built, health centres across Apache country in the east of the city. They cover all the large housing estates at this end of Hull, and will therefore have several thousand people registered at their practices. This is not some small family-type doctor's surgery as the name implies.

First thing this morning, I went to the small shopping precinct near Mum's gaff during her care visit. Everyone I spoke to had received the same message. Without exception, nobody I spoke to could recall the nurse of whose demise we were notified! Nobody knew her, which is hardly surprising given that everyone I spoke to could never recall having seen the same doctor twice, let alone remember the names of any ancillary staff attached to the group practice! So what was this practice up to? What did it hope to achieve?

Chin chin.

Glen Rewston and his Mum

 

Unlearning tool

It seems to me that at the root of, let's call it, the Covid crisis isn't just some dark constituent of the internet but the internet as an entirety: the sine qua non. I'm influenced here by the fact that, as a musician and music teacher, there is nothing the internet offers that isn't better served by traditional "technology", ultimately the technē [skill] of the voice itself. But even outside my specialism, I am astounded (this is a truism) by the obsession and addiction that the internet gives rise to. (I watch you far too much on the internet, for one thing.)

You will have a more moderate view, since your level of research at UK Column is unimaginable without the internet. But even you would be bound to arrive at a pessimistic outlook as regards any hope that the internet can foster any growth in the necessary dissidence that society now requires—were it not, I hazard, for your underlying faith.

But even more than the outward signs of mass-stupification—I like to say I don't use a smartphone because they're so inartistic—I see in people, often people quite close to me, a cascade of errors of judgement in all sorts of unrelated contexts. I'm not (yet) a believer in the evils of whatever type of magnetic-wave radiation theory there is out there that some are offering as an explanation. Even Desmetian hypnosis theory, good as far as it goes, falls short. If, as seems to be the case, people with few exceptions such as my self seem to have forgotten what they were taught and brought up on, why exactly has this come about if not via over-exposure to the algorithmic non-mind that the internet so perfectly represents?

So—I don't know if you can point me in any new directions—I'm in search of some rather grander analysis of the matter. Instead, people—dare I suggest it, you among them—prefer to assume that the internet isn't of itself a bad thing, only a tool that can be adapted to morally differing purposes. But, ultimately, tools shouldn't dominate our lives even if they have brilliant utilities—once they've done their job, they live back in their box and should leave us alone to be good or sinful to each other as we deem fit.

Handwritten letter from Central Europe

 

Looking for that blessed hope

I thank you and the rest of the UK Column team for your news broadcasts and articles. I find it particularly beneficial in terms of knowing where we are heading on Almighty God's calendar, because at the end of the day HE is in CONTROL.

We are the most blessed and most cursed generation, as we are witnessing what mankind has been awaiting for over two thousand years: the final end-time period of the blessed hope of the imminent return of our Messiah Jesus. There is no doubt in my mind that one must not only have knowledge of what is happening in the physical world but also the spiritual world if you want to make real sense of what is actually happening.

I have found by and large that those who believe in the reality of the New World Order very often tend to be atheistic or very much New Age, and the traditional Christians tend to be politically ignorant and uninterested in the New World Order. What I have found extraordinary in the attitude of the orthodox [older Protestant] churches, as opposed to the evangelical churches, is that they do not teach or study the end-time prophecies. I asked the local vicar at the Church of England in my town if she is informing her congregation of the end-time prophecies, and to my surprise, she said, "No, I don't, as it is far too depressing and frightening." Well, is it any wonder that Christianity in the West is withering away?

We know how predictably human beings behave from our past history, and, as they say, we never learn the lessons that once a nation ceases to follow and acknowledge their Creator and His laws, they quickly become very corrupt and amoral. As a result of that, nations begin to crumble and self-destroy, and that is were we are at this moment in time again.

So the timeline is, in my opinion, that society will continue to decline until apocalyptic events occur—which is a necessity to cleanse society of its evil. But this time, the cycle will be the worse than it has ever been. Mercifully, those days will be shortened. Our Creator tells us that it will be a period of the greatest tribulation since the foundation of the earth, never experienced before: extreme tyranny and control, as never before has mankind had access to the incredible technology which has now been developed to use for good or evil.

Regrettably, the powers that be intend to use it for evil: not only to enslave mankind but to experiment on hm by trying to tamper with our DNA and our minds, to take away our God-given gift of free will, which separates us from the animal kingdom.

The big problem I have with the New Age movement is that they minimise the influence of evil on this earth and on humanity, almost as if it does not exist. I believe this minimising occurs is because evil as a reality is associated with Christianity. The result is that the New Age philosophy is just another form of the arrogance of man, because he does not want to believe that he is not in control of his own destiny and that he is not some sort of mini-god, rather than acknowledge the existence of an omnipotent God, the Creator of the universe and of man.

Also, such denying that this evil entity known as Lucifer/Satan exists with his demonic workers, and that they have a major influence on this earth, to me is naïve and a form of burying their heads. I believe that until mankind recognises this truth—that until Lucifer is actually removed off this earth by Almighty God, there can never be long-term peace and harmony on earth—it will remain beyond man's capability to achieve it.

This entity knows his time is now very short, and as a consequence he intends to try wreak as much havoc and misery as he can on earth before his demise—because of his great hatred for Him who also created him. And only after the apocalyptic events predicted by the prophets of old and our Messiah Jesus come to fruition will we have utopia on earth.

Vivienne Pimm