UK Politics: Step Right Up, Step Right Up. Come Marvel At Our Amazing North Sea Snake Oil. Will Cure All Your Electoral Woes. Get It While It's Hot ;-)

[Prue]

That's strange that they want to introduce wolves again on purpose in the UK. Wouldn't wolves rather hunt sheep instead of deer? With so many sheep running around unsupervised in the UK, that would indeed be problematic I think. In (continental) Western Europe (also Germany) wolves also used to be extinct and they have only slowly migrated westwards from Eastern Europe again after the end of the cold war when the fences to Poland were removed. There's quite a lot of astonishment/hysteria still when wolves are spotted in rather densely populated areas in Western Germany. So far there haven't been any sightings in our little city forest, maybe we are still protected by the many autobahns nearby...

The first bear who migrated to Bavaria was shot years ago, but I think there are a few bears in Bavaria now again. Not further north as far as I know. Oh, but there's also a controversy about the herd of wild Wisents (European bison) that was set free in a remote forest years ago. The owners want to put fences around that part of the forest now to protect their other trees from Wisents gnawing on them.

Edited August 16, 2023 by Prue

[Heartofice]

8 minutes ago, Prue said:

Wouldn't wolves rather hunt sheep instead of deer?

Yeah probably, but that’s ok, because the government can pay the farmers to have their sheep killed by wolves . It’s a perfect system.. there are no obvious flaws. 

[lacuna]

Norway has 50 plus wolves, some roam between here and Sweden. They kill a few hundred sheep per year. (Lynx, bears, wolverines and eagles nab some as well.) The number varies year by year, since it's mostly young wolves striking out on their own, looking for their own territory that stray out of the wild and into agricultural areas.

 

Personally I'm not sure the UK is that suited for wolves, since true wilderness areas are small and scattered. Wolfpacks roam over HUGE areas, and there's inbreeding issues even here.

[Fragile Bird]

@Raja I don’t understand, why do you need to “convert” your driver’s license to rent a car? Has it expired? I don’t need a valid UK license to rent a car, just my valid Canadian one.

Canadians tend to chuckle over people in the UK worrying about driving distances. My friends visit their in-laws in Ottawa for a weekend pretty regularly, and that’s about a 5 1/2 hour drive from Toronto. But, it’s all perspective, isn’t it?

When I went to the UK in 1991 with friends, I bought a historical road atlas (no internet!) which worked fabulously well. You have the internet now, but if you can find a map of historic sites, or better, a book like I had, you could just choose a part of the country and make day trips hunting down historic sites. We started by spending a few days in London and then taking the train to Cambridge where we rented the car. My friend didn’t want to deal with London traffic and the wrong side of the road all at once. We took the smaller roads and checked the historic sites on the map. We would never have found Burghley House, for example, without the atlas. It was cool seeing it in the movie Pride and Prejudice years later, and all kinds of other movies and tv series, The Flash being the next one out. We went to the Downs because we were fans of Dick Francis, and got up at 5:00 am to see the race horses being exercised. We wandered off to see Bury St. Edmunds, such a lovely and historic town. We went north, skirting the Fens, and found a plague village, one of several in England where the villagers blockaded the outside world to prevent the plague from spreading. You can’t drive 10 miles in the UK in any direction without finding beautiful scenery and interesting history.

Go to the Salisbury Plain and see Stonehenge, then drive around the area. I just watched an edition of Digging for Britain, and they went to the Mendip Hills in Somerset, which I had never heard of. Stunningly beautiful! The Cheddar Gorge, wow! Eat cheddar!

Is your mom a fan of anything special, Jane Austen, Harry Potter, any television series? Plan your trip around one of those.

I wish I was there!

ps: I’m 68, and I can walk quite a bit. I bet your mom can do more than I can at 60!

 

[Prue]

19 minutes ago, lacuna said:

I am not sure the UK is that suited for wolves, since true wilderness areas are small and scattered. Wolfpacks roam over HUGE areas, and there's inbreeding issues even here.

Surprisingly, the wolves migrated rather quickly here and didn't stick only to true wilderness areas. Wolves in Germany – new data released today | BFN

(Wow, I wouldn't have thought that there are over 1,100 wolves in Germany!)

[Raja]

2 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

@Raja I don’t understand, why do you need to “convert” your driver’s license to rent a car?

 

Rules are slightly different depending on tourist vs resident. As a resident, I can drive on my Indian license for 1 year after I enter the UK and then after that I need to get a UK license ( which I've been too lazy to do because...London)

Yeah, I think it might be a case of taking a train somewhere and spending a few days there, but still planning that out. I need to look up the palces everyone's mentioned!

[Prue]

@Raja:

You could also check the official British tourism website:

The Official Website For UK Tourism | VisitBritain

I think I booked a day trip by mini-coach to Stonehenge once. Could have been from Salisbury. So you wouldn't necessarily need to rent a car in the South, either. You could stay a few days in a reasonably big city where they offer coach day trips to other destinations nearby.

In Cornwall, I rented a car once and did a sort of package tour which included the B&Bs and the rental car. Problem was, they forced you to do the sightseeing at *their* pace that way. Which meant: hardly any time to enjoy sightseeing or stopping somewhere with a nice view to have a cream tea or so. Don't be fooled by descriptions like: oh, only 120 km to reach the next destination. On narrow country roads with hedges (in the North: dry stone walls) that don't allow you to pass a lorry that can take a really long time. And it's stressy. When you had two nights in a row in the same B&B, it was better because you could choose to go where you wanted on one day at least. 

If you want to visit many historic sites (including Stonehenge) you might want to consider the Overseas Visitors Pass which can save a lot on entrance fees. Which can be really high in Britain. It's only available for non-residents and can only be booked from abroad, I think. There used to be a Great British Overseas Pass, but that seems to have been discontinued. Really annoying. Because now you have to research all the sites you want to visit, check which Pass covers them, and whether you actually save money that way. And you have to get different passes for England, Scotland or Wales, and look up whether a historic site belongs to English/Scottish whatever Heritage or National Trust. If you are a resident in the UK, it might be interesting for you to get an annual membership of e.g. National Trust or English Heritage instead, as you can visit sites as often as you like for free. E.g. if you live near a few castles / palaces that you might want to visit regularly on weekends to e.g. walk through a nice building and garden and have something to eat in the café.  

Overseas Visitors | English Heritage (english-heritage.org.uk)

[williamjm]

20 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

I'd suggest Scotland over the Lakes, though I'd also recommend renting a car. As Spocky said if you go outside of the cities and find somewhere rural and cosy, which is admittedly my preferred holiday, you're usually a fair distance from anything but a local shop with the essential groceries. And of course, a pub. I personally liked Loch Lomond, which had lots of lovely, not too strenuous walks with beautiful scenery and plenty of places which give you a cosy feeling of isolation. Also enjoyed Pitlochry which is further North closer to the highlands (I think....testing my memory and geography skills here). Pretty rural too so again I'd recommend renting a car.

I grew up in Pitlochry. It does have a good selection of walks around, including plenty of easy ones. It also has a direct train to London (although it is a long train journey) but once there not having a car would definitely be limiting in terms of exploring the area.

If you are visiting the Scottish Highlands in October make sure you are prepared for it to be potentially cold and wet (although to some extent that's true at any time of year). On the plus side, it'll be past midge season.

15 hours ago, Prue said:

If you don't want to hire a car, you could go to Edinburgh and start a mini bus tour from there. There are several companies offering guided tours, also more than one day trips.

I think that's a good suggestion. While Edinburgh itself isn't rural (although in Holyrood Park it is easy to forget you are in the city) you can get easily to a lot of rural areas around it in most directions.

[polishgenius]

Man is that Lucy Letby case grim. The fact that multiple people reported their fear that she was killing babies and the end result was them being ordered to apologise and go to mediation: I hope heads roll over that.

[Soylent Brown]

I've a friend who has been very involved in the case for years, and it looks grim for the hospital. There were more deaths after they found out and ignored the situation.

Edited August 18, 2023 by Soylent Brown

[Raja]

Apparently the healthcare staff raised concerns but management didn't buy it and the doctors/nurses had to go to the police

Depressing.

Quote

Dr Brearey says he demanded Letby be taken off duty in June 2016, after the final two murders. Hospital management initially refused.

The BBC investigation also found:

• The hospital's top manager demanded the doctors write an apology to Letby and told them to stop making allegations against her
• Two consultants were ordered to attend mediation with Letby, even though they suspected she was killing babies
• When she was finally moved, Letby was assigned to the risk and patient safety office, where she had access to sensitive documents from the neonatal unit and was in close proximity to senior managers whose job it was to investigate her
• Deaths were not reported appropriately, which meant the high fatality rate could not be picked up by the wider NHS system, a manager who took over after the deaths has told the BBC
• As well as the seven murder convictions, Letby was on duty for another six baby deaths at the hospital - and the police have widened their investigation
• Two babies also died while Letby was working at Liverpool Women's Hospital

 

Edited August 18, 2023 by Raja

[Spockydog]

Surely there's a criminal negligence case for those people to answer.

[Fragile Bird]

Good grief, I just read several stories about Lucy Letby and, although hindsight is 20/20, the attitude of the hospital administration reads like a Monte Python skit. Another dead baby? Just a run of bad luck. Same nurse working when all the babies died or nearly died? Poor dear, you’ve had a rough go, haven’t you? Doctors are worried? Apologize to the girl!

Considering the hospital averaged three baby deaths a year, you’d think serious alarm bells would have rung when so many babies died, and the same nurse was on duty every time. You can only believe “hard luck, poor girl” for so many times before you start thinking. It reminds me of what Goldfinger said to James Bond: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Interviews with medical staff popping up now the verdicts are in. 
 

The management who turned a blind eye while writing Letby a letter of apology(!) need to answer some hard questions

[Raja]

Yeah, there's a lot in this BBC report , the thing I quoted above is from there too

Quote

For Dr Brearey and his fellow consultants, the deaths of the two triplets were a tipping point. That evening, Dr Brearey says he called duty executive Karen Rees and demanded Letby be taken off duty. She refused.

Dr Brearey says he challenged her about whether she was making this decision against the wishes of seven consultant paediatricians - and asked if she would take responsibility for anything that might happen to other babies the next day. He says Ms Rees replied "yes".

How do you go against the word of *seven* paediatricians?

Quote

A few weeks later, in late January 2017, the seven consultants on the neonatal unit were summoned to a meeting with senior managers, including Mr Harvey and the hospital's CEO Tony Chambers.

 

Dr Brearey says the CEO told them he had spent a lot of time with Letby and her father and had apologised to them, saying Letby had done nothing wrong. Mr Chambers denies saying Letby had done nothing wrong. He said he was paraphrasing her father.

 

According to the doctor's account, the CEO also insisted the consultants apologise to Letby and warned them that a line had been drawn and there would be "consequences" if they crossed it.

 

Edited August 18, 2023 by Raja

[dog-days]

Fucking hell, what a mess. 

I didn't realise until a few minutes ago that this happened at the hospital where I was born (many years before Letby and murderously incompetent/cowardly managers set foot there). 

[ljkeane]

Yeah, I’ve been to that hospital several times. It’s very weird that something like this happened somewhere you know.

It’s not looking good for the hospital’s former administration though.

[Derfel Cadarn]

3 hours ago, ljkeane said:

Yeah, I’ve been to that hospital several times. It’s very weird that something like this happened somewhere you know.

It’s not looking good for the hospital’s former administration though.

An understatement!

Telling a group of paediatrician consultants to stop speaking of their concerns a nurse is killing babies, to apologise and attend mediation with her, not progress the investigations, and to be ready to report the concerned paediatricians to the GMC…

The former executives are already releasing the usual BS statements trying to cover their arses, but if there’s an enquiry, they’ll have some very hard questions to answer

[ljkeane]

9 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Telling a group of paediatrician consultants to stop speaking of their concerns a nurse is killing babies, to apologise and attend mediation with her, not progress the investigations, and to be ready to report the concerned paediatricians to the GMC…

To be fair I doubt the initial concern was that there was a serial killer involved. It was probably more along the lines that maybe mistakes were being made and Letby was the common factor but, you know, downplaying that isn’t ok either.

[Derfel Cadarn]

The father of Elle Edwards who was  murdered at Christmas in a botched hit in a pub was on a charity walk from Liverpool to Land’s End, with a friend. This was a very high profile case in thr UK, the killer was recently sentenced to jail.
 

The B&B in Devon wouldn’t let them stay, apparently on hearing their Scouse accents. The owners no doubt regret this as its getting increasing attention on social and mainstream media. I suspect their tripadvisor reviews may tumble; the North remembers.

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/dad-murdered-elle-edwards-claims-27549594