The Daily Novel

I’m off on holiday. First to my brother’s in Cornwall. I should be able to post on Monday so long as I can make contact with the Cornish pasty shop. I will be able to post again when I reach my sister’s house in South Devon. Off to South Wales next week where we have taken a house big enough for us and my eldest daughter’s family. I shall have to hunt around for a wireless connection.

And there are some goodies already in the computer from my guest bloggers.

The illustrious Professor Keeble has done a devastating critique about how the mainstream media is homogenising coverage of the Iraq and Afghan wars.

Young Phil Simms has done a nice piece telling the oldies what he thinks is missing in journalism today.

Paul Anderson has done a curtain raiser for his book, Orwell in Tribune. Not only journalism students but journalists too should read it. They could improve their style by reading some more of the prolific output of one of the all-time greats of journalism.

Godfrey Hodgson is taking a holiday from American politics and taking you on a cruise down his local river.

Oh, and if I have time, I shall finish my long think piece on the Trade Union Congress which is entitled: ‘The singing and dancing carthorse’.

Electoral Reform Services has just phoned xcitybob.com, who is now back in London, with the result of their experimental internet poll which they conducted from their stall at the TUC annual conference in Brighton this week. The questino was:
Who do you want to be the next Labour leader when Tony Blair steps down? The results were keyed in to the computer. Electoral Reform do not make any claims that the result is science. They were concerned to test out their new system. Anyone who passed the stall was free to vote. People were not asked for their delegate card. So it is impossible to say how many of the 214 voters were delegates, and how many, helpers of one kind and another.

The results were:

John McDonnell 59%
Gordon Brown 10%
Alan Johnson 8%
Hazel Brears 3%
Peter Hain 3%

The other 13 candidates polled under 3%. The full list is at:

Readers might notice a slight discrepancy between this result and my headline yesterday, Brother Brown wins hearts at Brighton.

Pause for deep reflection, look for the sackcloth and ashes, consider immediate resignation. Slight recovery.

My report of the dinner is based on reports from a few of the 500 senior figures who were at the dinner. Each of them was going on the mood of the meeting. I don’t think any of them mentioned McDonnell as a realistic possibility. My interviewing method was entirely random, apart from the people whom I knew already. I talked to people sitting down at the same table, wondering around looking at stalls, and inevitably those standing staring at the ocean smoking a cigarette. Of those about two or three mentioned McDonnell. Many of those also mentioned Brown as their first choice.

I considered the possibility that McDonnell, or his supporters might have conspired together, but I don’t think this was likely. I considered the possibility that those who voted had a degree of resentment because Brown was not speaking to the main conference. But no-one I spoke with expressed any such resentment.

All this cogitation has led me to the blindingly obvious fact, which I already knew myself, but had temporarily forgotten. Mcdonnell is sometimes referred to as a left-winger, sometimes as a trade union loyalist. I spoke at an event he hosted for the NUJ freelance branch. His interventions after my contribution and that by the General Secretary were along the lines of encouraging a revival of traditional trade union values. This was two years ago. But I trust my own assessment of him then.So I am no longer surprised that 126 trade unionists voted for Mcdonnell.

I am still surprised that only 21 voted for Brown and only 17 for Alan Johnson, who was the person most often mentioned as an alternative to Brown by the people I talked with. This is clearly some sort of protest vote. So my conclusion is not so far different from what I wrote yesterday. The race is still open.

……but minds are not yet made up.

That’s the essence of the news from Brighton, where I am composing this sitting on a bench staring at the charred remains of the West Pier. The annual conference of the Trade Union Congress is still going on but the press room is two-thirds empty. Most of the press corp have gone home now that Blair and Brown have gone home. But I stayed on to find out a bit more about what delegates think and feel.

Gordon Brown came down yesterday evening to speak to a private dinner at the Grand Hotel. It was clearly more grand than private, because there were 500 people present. Not only the General Secretaries and all senior people in the trade unions, but more than half the Labour cabinet (including John Prescott, Ruth Kelly, David Millibrand, Alan Johnson, Alastair Darling and Margaret Beckett) and fifteen junior ministers. So it was not too difficult for me to find people prepared to tell me what happened.

They saw a side of Brown which the public rarely sees. Relaxed, good-humoured, light years away from the Iron Chancellor. He threw away his prepared speech and spoke impromptu, heart to heart, as it were. He made most of those in the room feel he was one of them. Paying homage to Scottish heroes of the trade union movement, Alex Kitson, the T&G leader and Mick Maghey, originally a Communist mine worker. And paying a most fulsome tribute to trade union leaders of the past, including one sitting in from of him, Jack Jones, former T&G general secretary, who is alive and well, aged 92. He reminded his audience that Jack was fighting in the Spanish Civil War seventy years ago before most of his audience was born.

There is no doubt that Brown did himself a lot of good on Tuesday night. At present he is clearly the favourite to win the trade union vote for the Labour leadership but his victory is far from certain. He won hearts but the minds of several of those I spoke with are troubled. They noted that in his prepared speech, which he did not use, he was proclaiming his support for the Blairite reforms, including privatisation, school academies, etc, etc. They note that he has stood shoulder to shoulder with Blair over the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which are not popular with a much bigger group of trade unionists than those who organised the Stop the War demo.

Those I spoke with recognise the contribution Brown has made in this government to pushing through measures which have led to some redistribution of wealth towards the poorest, like the minimum wage. But what they fear is if Brown gets power he will give them more Blairism.

To sum up the situation, trade unionists are far happier with Brown than Blair. They know him better, for one thing, because he has over several years been careful to cultivate them and talk at trade union functions. But the longer you talk to a delegate the more negative are the feelings that begin to come out. Some are very negative. ‘He’s a Stalinist and a centraliser’, said one.

If some other credible leadership contender for the Labour leadership emerges in the next few months he, or she, is likely to find out just exactly what I found out here, that union minds are still open. And if that contender has the right policies he will not find it difficult to win over union hearts and minds.

I am off to a fringe meeting, so may have more to say tomorrow.

Tony Blair has been and gone, No shots were fired. Once the much advertised walkout by the railwaymen had taken place the hall was a model of decorum. The assembled trade union delegates at the TUC annual conference in Brighton gave Prime Minister a courteous reception. Much more like the Conservative Party conference where dissent is a dirty word and protest is quietly stifled by the combined forces of Conservative Central Office and what used to be called the Blue Rinse Brigade, the Tory women from the shires. The trade union delegates listened to everything Blair said, without interrupting, apart from the odd-catcall.

This was not a managed conference. The security guards had not identified the trouble makers and marched them off to another room. This was the voice of the trade union movement 2006 model. They realise, and have realised since long before Tony Blair even got to be Prime Minister, that the only way they could survive in an age of anti-union laws and declining membership, was to win the hearts and minds of the workforce and of the general public..

But the Prime Minister did not get an exactly warm reception. It was courteous clapping, much of the kind you experience in the theatre when the cast decides to come out for a third curtain call. There were no cheers. And not only was there no standing ovation, absolutely no-one stood up, except for one man who I think was going to the loo.

The Prime Minister said nothing new, but he said it eloquently and with his customary good humour. Then, as widely billed in advance, he went to the corner of the stage, where delegates were lining up to ask him some tough questions.

The first questioner was a Muslim lady (this is the new multi-ethnic female friendly trade union movement) asking about the 2.3 billion pounds spent on bringing private consultants into the public services and paying them six times as much for doing the same job. Tony explained that it was for the best. He knew some people felt frustrated, but you had to have reform to expand the public sector; there were now a quarter of a million more workers in the NHS and 90,000 more teachers.

Another questioner said the Prime Minister had said that he believed in fairness. How about Thames Water? He alleged that the German company which had bought it had upped director’s salaries by 40 per cent, fired 300 workers, and was now planning to sell it at a five million pound profit. Was that fair? Tony understood his concern but, he shrugged his shoulders, what could he do? It was a private company. The Prime Minister did not seem to realise that privatisation was the point of the question.

Only once did the conference let itself go. That was on the education question. Tony told them how much better it was going to be with the new trust schools funded by big companies. The conference erupted with raucous laughter and hoots of derision.

Brendan Barber, TUC General Secretary moved on to the final farewell. ‘I expect waves of relief will be sweeping over you.’, he said. Tony cracked a joke, then put on his really serious face and his most truly sincere voice, and told them he had always had a great respect for the work of the trade unions, they were part of our democracy, and it was no bad thing they did not always agree. That was a sign of a healthy democracy.

The delegates clapped politely again. Tony made his exit centre stage, waving his hand just like our dear Queen does, as he slipped behind the screen. There were no shouts and stamping of feet calling on him to come back for a second curtain call. And no-one sang, ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow.’

Soon after I posted my Royal Free blog I realised that the six near death experiences I referred to were not all black and white examples of good and bad doctoring. I must correct that impression now. The details can be explained later when I come to write about the actual experiences. But what has now come pouring into my head are memories of a seventh experience of bad and good doctoring, which did not threaten my life but which could have had serious consequences. This case also involved the Royal Free Hospital, but this time on the side of the angels.

It was Friday, 13 December 1975. I was riding back from a press conference on my 250 cc Honda motor cycle along Pall Mall to the office of The Economist, for whom I then worked. It was just after lunch. There had been a sudden sharp shower and the rainwater on the road was glistening in the wintry sunshine. Suddenly a BMW pulled out from the kerbside in front of me. I was travelling at about 25 mph. I slammed on my brakes, the bike skidded and I ended up on the road with my bike on top of me.

The BMW driver jumped out and helped me to my feet. I tested my left leg. Although I felt no pain I was sure something was wrong. The driver said, ‘I’m a doctor.’ And ran his hands down my leg which was covered by thickly padded motor cycle over trousers. He said, ‘Nothing broken, you’ll be quite alright.’ I said, ‘I’m not so sure’. Then his companion came over and said, ‘I’m a nurse.’ She ran her hands up and down my leg and confirmed there was nothing broken. They then got back in their BMW and sped away up Pall Mall.

I have wondered to this day whether their speedy exit was because he was a bit over the limit or because they were having a clandestine affair. I shall never know, unless one of them is still alive, reads my blog and confesses.

Happily, the manager of the Wakefield Building Society who had run out of his office to see what was happening, had been listening to me carefully. He said, ‘Come and sit down in my office and have a cup of tea’. He helped me to hop to a chair. The ambulance came in minutes and took me the short distance to St George’s Hospital on Hyde Park Corner.

I was quickly x-rayed and bedded and within an hour or so, a very experienced consultant surgeon came around to see me. He told me that I had broken my upper hip bone right at the top. It could not be put in plaster and in the olden days I would have had to spend six months on my back with my leg suspended in a cradle while it healed. But now there was a new process which involved inserting three pins to join the broken parts which meant I could be up and about in two or three weeks. I consented to the operation.

He came back to see me in the late evening. I was impressed that he was here treating me rather than rushing off to his country cottage. He told me that they had discovered that my particular injury was best treated by the old method. I said rather weakly, ‘Why?’ I do not remember what he replied but I do remember his commanding voice and the imposing authority of his stature. Clearly this was an eminent man who knew best. I then asked whether I could be moved to the Royal Free, which was only a hundred yards from my house, so that my family did not have to traipse down to Hyde Park Corner to visit me over Christmas and the next six months. Quite out of the question. Bad medical practice. Best for me to stay with doctors who had started treating me. And he swept off to the next patient.

That night it was not only the traffic roaring around Hyde Park Corner that kept me awake. I was up most of the night compiling a list of people I was going to telephone to help get me transferred to the Royal Free. Top of list was my GP. Bottom of the list was an influential Conservative MP who happened to be an old friend of mine.

I only had to make one call. My GP, Donald Grant, listened carefully to what I had to say. He told me that he could get me moved. It might take a few days but I would be in the Royal Free in time for Christmas. He just made his deadline. The ambulance arrived on the morning of Christmas Eve. But when I arrived at the Royal Free I got another shock.

The registrar who came to my bedside wanted to operate immediately. I protested that the eminent surgeon at St George’s had said that my case was best treated by traction. He showed me the x-rays. I could see the three pins. All three were deeply embedded in the bottom part of the fracture. But only one of them reached the other side and just the tip of it. Finally it dawned on me that St George’s had bungled the operation and concealed the truth from me. And sentenced me to six months on Hyde Park Corner quite un-necessarily.

But I was still not ready to trust this young registrar. How could I be sure that the Royal Free would do the operation any better? He explained that the Royal Free, which had only been open a few months, had all the latest technology, including an x-ray machine which enabled the surgeon to see exactly where the pins were going at the time they inserted them. St George’s, he also explained, was in process of being moved to a new site in Tooting. The old hospital on Hyde Park Corner did not have this new technology. I signed the consent form.

By Christmas Day I was fit enough to enjoy watching my daughters cavort around the ward pushing each other up and down in one of the wheelchairs. By the end of January I had recovered sufficiently to hobble on crutches to my new job at the London Business School.

But I would have spent the first six months of 1986 lying flat on my back, being steadily driven madder and madder by the inactivity and by the noise of the traffic. If it had not been for Donald Grant, who therefore ranks near the top of my list of good doctors.

I hope he reads this.

I am off to Brighton tomorrow for the TUC conference to find out what the workers really think about Blair and Brown. Blair is talking to the full conference. Brown is being smuggled in to a private dinner on Tuesday evening to talk with some of the general secretaries.

Watch this space.

Before the Royal Free lawyers start reaching for their writs I must make it 100 per cent. plain that I think that the Royal Free Hospital is one of the best hospitals in the country. And I must make it 100 per cent clear just what I am attacking. Six times in my life I have nearly died because of the actions of bad doctors. On the first five occasions my life was saved by good doctors. On the sixth occasion, when I was locked up against my will in the mental health ward of the Royal Free for Christmas 2004, I saved myself. What I will be attacking is not people. The ‘bad’ doctors who treated me were mostly more than decent human beings. What I shall be attacking is not people but the training system which fails to spend anything like enough time teaching what I regard as the most important skill all doctors need. The ability to listen empathetically to the patient.

There will not be another word about the Royal Free in this particular blog which will be about the first occasion I nearly died because of bad doctoring. That was in July 1953. Winston Churchill was still Prime Minister, aged 78. But, though I did not know it at the time, he was not in charge of the country. He was not even in charge of himself. He was having more difficulty even than during the war with his own manic depressive temperament and the bouts of drunkenness which went with it. His ability to work effectively was also being affected by physical illness.

At that time I was still in the smoky old Black Country. I was living in Birmingham where I was at the end of my second year at the University (Chancellor, Sir Anthony Eden, who was also Deputy Prime Minister). I was still making regular visits to Wolverhampton on Saturdays because in those days the names of the Wolves footballers were known to all the schoolboys in the land. As I write I see in my head the blond head of Billy Wright rising to meet the ball above the heads of all the other players, as he executed another brilliant header.

But it was July, and a blazing hot July. And, exams over, I was playing tennis that Friday morning. At the end of a not very strenuous game with a girl I was courting I had a terrible headache, so immediately after lunch I took myself off to the university doctor, who I had never had cause to consult before. He told me that it was nothing to worry about. It was obviously because I had been working too hard for the second year exams. In vain, did I explain to him that this was no ordinary headache, once, twice, three times. But he didn’t even examine me. He sat at his desk and wrote me out a prescription for – aspirins. Even though I also told him that I had a bottle of aspirins back at my digs.

I never took that prescription to the chemist. I did not even go back to my digs. I took the next train to Wolverhampton, went home where my mother put me to bed and called in her own doctor, who was a woman called Dr Pitman. She came round late that Friday evening and listened carefully to what I had to say. She then examined me, feeling the back of my neck and making me try to do funny things with my legs. She came back three times on the Saturday. She came back again on the Sunday morning. And on Sunday afternoon I was in an ambulance on my way to the Royal Hospital in Wolverhampton. It was only three miles but it still stands out in my memory as the most painful journey of my life. The headaches by then were splitting my head apart and the bumpy ride in the ambulance made them even worse.

The consultant told me that if I had come only a day later there would have been nothing they could do for me. And, as I discovered later, if I had had the illness only a year or two before I would have died because it was fatal until two new drugs were invented and used in combination. I had ample time to find out all the facts about my condition because the cure involved me lying flat on my back for four months.

There is not much you can do for fun in that position, unless one of the nurses jumps on top of you. Sadly, that never happened to me. But I longed for it to happen and as I write the face, topped by auburn hair, of a smallish young woman appears on the television screen inside my head. Actually she was not a nurse, she was an occupational therapist, who was attempting to get me to do a bit of weaving in my prone position.

The illness was tubercular meningitis. That happens when the infection gets into the fluid which surrounds the spine and goes right up to the head, which is where it kills you. The first drug that was necessary was streptomycin, one of the new anti-biotics where were developed in the years following the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1928. The streptomycin was injected through a long needle which had to be inserted between the vertebrae of the spine. It was not very painful at all if the nurse hit the right spot but if she missed the target it made you want to scream. Some of the nurses were brilliant at it. Some of them were terrible. Amongst those who were terrible were two or three who stirred up the most passion in my youthful loins. So I suppose I matured a bit. Looks ain’t everything.

It takes a long time for new drugs to get from the inventor’s laboratory into hospitals. Penicillin did not come into use until 1941. Streptomycin was invented in 1944 and came into use a few years later. But it could not cure the meningitis on its own. It needed to be administered along with another drug, izonasid, which was discovered by a Hungarian scientist in the late 1940s. When I became ill the scientists and the doctors together were just learning how to use these two drugs together and to determine the optimum doses. I was one of the first cases to be treated with them in a British hospital.

Dr Pitman, because she kept up with the medical literature, knew a bit of this. What she was doing in between her visits to me was, first, looking it up in the medical journals, then talking on the telephone on a Saturday to the consultant at Wolverhampton’s Royal Hospital. He was talking to a colleague he knew at a London hospital and relaying his suggestions back to Dr Pitman, who then came back to do another test on me.

I felt, and still feel, enormous gratitude to the scientists and the doctors who made it possible for me to live beyond 19. For many years my gratitude to the doctors was because they were all so dedicated that they were prepared to give up a part of their weekend to heal the sick. Now I realise that even more than dedication to the Hippocratic Oath, what really saved my life was the Dr Pitman’s ability to really listen to the patient. Some people naturally listen better than others. But the listening can be learnt. And all doctors could do with a lot more training in it then they get.

Now back to Dr Pitman. She was part of the large and extensive Pitman family. And like most of them she was a Quaker. Her religion was most definitely part of the reason that she was so dedicated to healing the sick. But the Quaker religious practices are also an excellent training in listening. Apart from quaking physically (which is why they are called Quakers) Quakers in their group meetings, express their thoughts and feelings to each other. And, above all, they listen empathetically to each other. And engage in a dialogue with each other.

Readers by now must be quite dizzy by the number of subjects which I have touched upon in this article and the way I have leaped from one to the other.

This is quite deliberate.

This blog is one of those in the manic depressive diary slot, in which I am attempting to demonstrate how the human mind works in manic mode. All the ideas and facts contained in this article were present in my head when I sat down to start this article. There were also another two different, but related, subjects about which I wrote 600 words in the first draft. Worse, there were also ideas for several more articles, about the many experiences of my life with good doctors and bad doctors, all in my head when I started. So this is only a small sample of what comes in one fell swoop into the mind in manic mode.

All the ideas I have not written about will come up again in my head in the coming weeks. But I am not sure how long it will be before I can get around to writing about the events in the opening paragraph. Just what was it that nearly killed me at the Royal Hospital in the early weeks of 2005?

I am not yet ready to write about that because it was such a powerful experience. And because I have to find the right words and the right style to make what is clear already in my own mind comprehensible to minds which might not work in quite the same way.

Dad: Holly, I enjoyed the chat about cats. But I think I have come to a decision.

Holly: What’s that, Daddy?

Dad: These imaginary conversations must end. The Holly in my head that I am talking to is aged about 9. A few of my readers know for sure that you are 37 and that you fled the family nest aged about 18 and have been living very much your own life ever since.

Holly: Yes, Dad but it would be a pity to stop them altogether. Some bits were quite funny.

Dad: Glad you think so. But the obvious solution is to go to the next generation. I thought of that before I started but Joe is a bit too young at 4 years old.

Holly: That’s a bit stuffed shirt, Daddy. They are imaginary conversations and you needn’t tell anyone how old Joe is.

Dad: I already have, love, in the lines above. Must be my commitment to journalistic truth. But you’re right. I don’t have to restrict myself to the kind of thing that Joe can actually say, I can include things which I think he might be thinking.

Holly: Fine by me, Dad. I cannot speak for Joe.

Dad: I shall have to take the risk. Joe can always correct me when he learns to read. The other thing that stopped me at the start is that it means that I shall have to call myself Grandad.

Holly: But you are a grandad, Daddy.

Dad: Yes, I know love and I enjoy it. But a lot of people think grandads are quite out of touch with the world today. They think they should spend all their time being fond grandparents, going on cruises and chatting with other grannies and grandads.

Holly: That’s pathetic, Dad. You are surely not going to let your life be dictated by what people might think of you. You are supposed to be a journalist not a public relations man.

Dad: Good point, daughter. Can I go to bed now?

Holly: What exactly are fat cats, Daddy?

Dad: What the newspapers call ‘fat cats’ are the bosses and managers of big companies who pay themselves huge salaries despite the fact that, according to the newspapers, they are sitting around doing nothing while their companies are getting into a terrible mess.

Holly: But why cats, Daddy?

Dad: I can see why you ask the question. Our cat, Kitty, is thin. But a lot of cats, like the one in the flat below Gran’s in Watford, are very fat. But all cats, including, our Kitty as you will have noticed, spend most of the day curled up on the floor in one of their favourite spots, doing absolutely nothing.

Holly: But if all cats are sitting around doing nothing, why are some cats very fat and why is our Kitty so thin?

Dad: I wish I could tell you the answer to that. But I can’t and I have not been able to find a satisfactory answer in any of the books I have read. But it is a really interesting question. Because although all the experts agree that it is their cat-like nature which causes cats to lie around most of the day, there is no general agreement as to why some of them are fat, and some of them are average and some of them are thin. And as soon as you start asking the same questions of human beings, it becomes even more interesting.

Holly: Why is that, Daddy?

Dad: Well, before I try and answer that I want to talk about dogs. Larkin, like Kitty, is on the thin side. But, as you must have noticed, his behaviour is quite different. Whenever anyone in the house picks up the lead he leaps up and down and snaps. He cannot wait to be up on the heath and off the lead so he can run around. That is because his daddy was a Border collie, a work dog used to devoting his life to running around rounding up sheep. Like those Welsh collies we saw at Dolgelly last summer.

Holly: But sometimes Larkin is quite happy to lie around doing nothing. And he obviously likes it when Kath picks him up and cuddles him as if he was a baby.

Dad: That is because his mummy was a spaniel. Spaniels have a quite different nature from collies. They have an affectionate nature and they are a bit lazy. They like lying around. You must have noticed that when I am still in my dressing gown sitting at the computer at 10 AM Larkin is lying at my feet, gazing up affectionately. Not jumping up and down to go on the walk I usually take him at 8 AM. But as soon as I go and get the lead, there he is, jumping up and down.

Holly: What’s all this to do with human beings?

Dad: Human beings are even more complicated than cats and dogs. We know what it is like to be cat like, collie like or spaniel like, but we are not at all sure what it is to be human like. And humans, as you know, come in all sizes. The newspapers are full of advice to those considered too fat, to take more exercise, in other words, to behave more like the Border collies. And sometimes they tell them they are fat because they eat too much.

Holly: So what should we tell them, Daddy?

Dad: Well, we should tell them to spend more time looking at cats and dogs and less time reading the newspapers. Some human beings are born fatter, average or thinner. Some human beings are born with a cat like nature, some with a collie like nature and some with a spaniel like nature.

Holly: Which am I, Daddy?

Dad: That’s for you to decide, love. Besides it’s time for bed.

The Sunday newspapers are full of it. If people are reading all of it they must be finding it difficult to find time to go to church. So I am going to hold my fire and blog on something entirely different later.

But I am going to visit the front line myself to do a bit of on the spot reporting. On Tuesday I am off to Brighton, where the troops of Old Labour have already gathered for the annual conference of the Trade Union Congress. On Tuesday Tony Blair is addressing the full conference. In the evening Gordon Brown is talking to some of the generals.

It should be fun. And who knows I might find time to toss a few pebbles into the sea and think lofty thoughts.