Dear Spotlight,
My wife Sue SRN called me in to watch your programme which was to celebrate the start of OUR NHS 75 years ago from Torbay Hospital
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001nk94/spotlight-evening-news-05072023
There is much that I could say about it. It started nervously with rehearsed statements by senior staff in the Acute Medical Unit. It included short interviews of patients in the AMU. But as journalists you must have moral and ethical reservations about video recording vulnerable people after oral permission is gained.
Ms Graham interviewed Dr Matt Halkes a consultant anaesthetist. His morale appeared to be low and he started with 'its very hard times'. There was mention of technology and 'apps'. Mr Kevin Dixon of 'Healthwatch' added very little as expected but included 'we must involve patients'! Healthwatch tries to blunt the reality. Dr Sarah Wollaston, whom I know is a good GP, said this in her smiling contribution - 'Its very difficult to be efficient when your beds are very full.' This was after Ms Graham asked whether they would encourage people to come into the NHS - this 'business'.
Your editor included a piece showing the mountainous nurse with 'head set' communicating with a neurologist sitting remotely via the net. The patient had multiple sclerosis and had a spinal symptom. You might know, that of all specialists, neurologists need to take careful histories and then examine the patient, and especially the 'nervous system', with great skill and in detail. The editor included a clip of this nurse falling over. Was this mocking? Mrs Williams, the happy patient, said it was good to avoid the germs in attending the hospital. Some truth there perhaps.
An image of Teignmouth Hospital was shown and audio - 'the first hospital to be built by the NHS'. The BBC will know its fate might now be sealed, a ridiculous centre for a medical bureaucracy having been approved by Teignbridge 'planning' two weeks ago to replace just a few functions of a closing hospital.
Read more: Your programme celebrating the founding of OUR NHS 75 years ago - from Torbay Hospital
Preface:
I was to be one of eleven speakers at the Conference, 3 doctors and one dental surgeon among them. Freedom of speech in the land of Magna Carta (but hear lawyer Anna De Buisseret with Prof Dolores Cahill in Part 2 on this) is only happening in groups and via these new platforms like Brand New Tube.
Dr Stephen Hopwood, the engine for this meeting, booked it for Totnes Town Hall. Stopped by Totnes Town Council after a petition - c.130. One vote for the meeting - Councillor George Mitchell. Then tried Dartington - no go. Then the Toorak Hotel Torquay - an ideal venue. The manager - a good man, had calls from Public 'Health' England and Torbay Council demanding that he refuse to host the conference. Dependent re licence etc he had to kow-tow.
This chill some. but for most it is 'water off a duck's back'. 'Dear, I am on the 'pooter'. What would you like from Morrison's home delivery tomorrow? The smoked duck breast sounds tasty'.
Find time to dip into the talks, especially the interview - off camera, of my new young doctor friend. This comes after my 29 minutes - 1.03 hrs to 1.32
For truth, and for the revolution of the mind and a turning away from global serfdom
David
Part 1 https://brandnewtube.com/watch/the-awakening-conference-part-one-20th-nov-2021_5e8QgkOvOvGHZXN.html My 31 minute contribution is from 1.03 hours to 1.32 hrs.
Part 2 https://brandnewtube.com/watch/the-awakening-conference-part-two-20th-nov-2021_rnbT3f2DHXjl8cz.html
(Meeting at the Toorak hotel in Torquay cancelled by Public ‘Health’ England and Torbay Council so planned march in Totnes +www will suffice)
I am pleased to speak of OUR NHS. With the poverty between WW1 and 2, and the hardest slog for freedom from Nazi domination, a bankrupt Britain decided that ‘loving thy neighbour’ was the essence of our humanity. And it happened in 1948 in spite of strong opposition from the British Medical Association and many doctors.
I will give you a very personal account of the NHS because I have seen it and felt it all, ever since I became a medical student aged 18 in 1958 at St Mary’s Paddington, the home of penicillin. I will speak of its lowering under a deeply fascist regime, and speak at the end of my certainty that there will be a renaissance in my calling, in parallel with the rebuilding of OUR NHS.
Read more: Awakening Conference: On the Path to a Revolution of the Mind
David Halpin FRCS
Kiln Shotts
Haytor
Newton Abbot
TQ13 9XR
25thof May 2021
To your Honour, the justice in the High Court in Manchester in the case of the GMC v Mr Mohammad Iqbal Adil FRCS Ed FRSI
Ref: CO/1567/2021 Dr Mohammad Iqbal Adil FRCS Ed FRSI GMC 5183820
"I do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth."
There is too much paper in this case. I do not want to subject your Honour to more. I hope to be succinct, and direct as well. I reiterate what I said in the previous document of 19 pages, analysing and responding to the claim made by the GMC. That is - I am doing more than the usual McKenzie friend in giving a view because it is in my native tongue.
First there is the ‘incident’ where in Mr Adil’s operation to relieve obstruction by a rectal cancer in a very ill man with secondary cancer in the draining lymph nodes and liver, he brought out the distal ie wrong end of the colon, requiring correction a few days later. This was the one product of a trawl, and it has revealed a ghost of a fish. A copy of the clinical notes has never been put into the defendant’s hands in spite of his asking at least three times. This is unlawful and unjust. Is there something in those notes which are best hidden? I ask that it be struck out.
Read more: Open letter to Dame Clare Marx DBE DL, FRCS SFFMLM - Address Court Summary
Second open letter to
Dr Dyer, former Medical Director, Torbay Hospital/TSDHT in the first instance,
and copies to
Chairman of TSDHT – Admiral Sir Richard Ibbotson KBE, CB, DSC - ‘Provider’ body
Dr Paul Johnson Chairman of the Devon Clinical Commissioning Group -‘Commissioning’ body
Professor Adrian Harris Executive Medical Director and Deputy Chief Executive, Royal Devon and Exeter and to those with ultimate responsibility-
Mr Matthew Hancock Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, NHS Improvenent, and Mr Jepson – NHS Providers.
and to some of the MPs in Devon who are not holding the executive to account
First open letter - https://dhalpin.infoaction.org.uk/37-articles/nhs/330-letter-to-dr-robert-dyer-mb-chb-medical-director-at-torbay-hospital
Dear Dr Dyer,
I wrote to you on the 2nd of November. There has been various correspondence since which I will refer to briefly.
Re Case 1. The most abysmal treatment I have ever seen since qualification at St Mary's in 1964.
I attempted to contact you at Torbay but ended with Ms Fox, PA to Ms Davenport. She told me you were 'off site' (I presume either at the Exeter ''Nightingale'' or re STP SW). She was reading my correspondence to you - as I understand it. I asked on a Friday for the records of Mrs Jean Owen (JO) to be sent to me on the Monday. She had sent written permission to you for release of her records to me. I was trying to get skilled help for her left arm, loss of which was threatened. An image taken in her home by Jo Clarke-Irons, about 2 months after presentation with a fracture of her olecranon process at Torbay A&E- ? open ? closed, is within the link above on my website. Lay people should be warned – disturbing. Incidentally, I have never seen such thick nylon sutures before.
The records have never arrived here. I probably asked also for the links to the digitised radiographs, in part to see whether there was evidence of ?open, ?closed fracture.
Read more: Second Open Letter to Dr Robert Dyer etc 21-12-2020
I am very glad to see in last week’s Mid Devon the wide, robust support for this hospital. It has served the people very well since very early in the 50s when Britain was on its ‘uppers’ after WW2.
Readers will know that I have been on the case for the Community Hospitals for years. I have spent thousands of hours in my retirement on this, both in South Devon, and Devon more widely – especially in its north. In spite of fact and logic, and along with other conscientious citizens, I have seen a fatal combination of the CCG and the Torbay ‘Trust’ closing 70% of these beds. As predicted, the inability to discharge patients promptly from Torbay when right to do so, and to exclude the best care to patients who can best be treated primarily by GPs in local hospitals, has been proven.
This has reflected a ‘neo-liberal’ ideology in the three main political parties. The idea is that ‘public’ is bad, and ‘private’ with so called competition, and privatisation, are good. For instance, a talk I gave in Totnes in 2007 was entitled ‘Your NHS: Going, going, gone.’ It was widely advertised and all those town councils where there were community hospitals were written to. 30 people turned up – mostly GP friends and their ex-nurse wives. There was one councillor. This was at the tail end of a Labour regime. For too many decades OUR NHS has been a political football and victim to political whim.
Readers who notice signals will have questioned why April 1stwas chosen as a calendar day for the launching of the Health and Social Care Bill in 2012. This was driven through with Lansley, now Baron Lansley. What ever was said ‘The NHS is Safe in Our Hands’ etc, the opposite was intended. This bill was not founded on professional knowledge and experience in our medical services. Instead there was major input from such as PWc, McKinsey et al.
Read more: MDA ‘Teignmouth Hospital will re-open and its vital functions be restored’