WEEKEND WIDDY
Random Thoughts and Musings
Welcome to Weekend Widdy which, as regular readers will know, is a collection of short comments and observations of the type that used to surround my main article on my old Daily Express page. It can come out anytime over the weekend, but usually on a Sunday, and is free to all.
A quick reminder that I am also on Cameo and very happy to do greetings or congratulations for you and yours. Many thanks also to my paying subscribers whose loyalty keeps this substack going.
This week Widdy on Wednesday will be on Thursday in recognition of the unlikelihood that people will want to spend New Year’s Eve reading substacks!
First of all a very happy new year to all my readers. I hope that 2026 brings you everything for which you could wish. As I write this, there is yet another flurry of peace talks over Ukraine and I'm no more encouraged than I have been by previous efforts. I cannot imagine Putin agreeing to any terms that do not include the ceding of land which he has has won as a result of the war and if he should win any such concession at all, then the message that will go out is that the West no longer protects itself against the seizure of land by war and invasion, which is hardly a deterrent to aggressive regimes.
Trump, who once boasted that he could end the Ukraine war in a day, has to face the unpalatable fact that he is up against one of the few countries in the world which are not afraid of the USA and that he cannot simply impose his will through international bullying. Sanctions of course can be effective but if a government is prepared to see its people suffer then it can be a very long time indeed before they bite sufficiently hard.
So I am not hopeful of a just settlement. Yet it is impossible to imagine Trump letting this drag out forever and the single biggest danger is that he will wash his hands of Europe altogether, leaving us to do what we can with our weakened defences and determined foes.
Boxing day brought us the usual spectacle of men in red jackets descending to the level of the animal kingdom by pursuing a creature to a cruel death. At least that is what some of them were doing. The rest were sticking to the law and following a pre-laid trail. It now looks as though the persistent abuse of the law is going to mean that even trail hunting will be abolished. So the determination of one group to carry on with an outlawed activity is to cost the other its reasonably harmless recreation.
When the law was passed in 2004 forbidding hunting live quarry, I heard MPs openly boasting that they were still hunting. Hunt Monitors ( not to be confused with saboteurs) were busy obtaining photographic evidence of instance after instance of abuse. Often elderly and often female, they were in some instances physically attacked by hunters and hunt followers. I showed a film in Parliament of both the blatant disregard of the law and some of those assaults. The police on the ground seemed ignorant of what constituted a breach of the legislation. It was a powerful documentary and a tribute to those hunt monitors who made it, some of whom must by now be dead.
Inevitably the hunting lobby tries to portray opponents as politically motivated anti-toffs but there was a small cadre of Tory MPs who supported the Act including me and the late David Amess, none of whom could be described as remotely influenced by class warfare. We wanted only to protect animals from a cruel and unnecessary death.
I say unnecessary because figures produced at the time showed that 94% of fox-destruction was not done by hunting so it was a pretty ineffective pesticide. I say cruel because of the chase, whereby an animal is running for its life in mortal fear, with the hounds getting closer and closer, before being torn to death. And for sport!
Ah, wailed the hunters, but think of all the kennel workers who will be put out of their livelihood. Yet what has that to do with it? If we were to abolish ill health and crime we would put all the nurses, doctors and police out of work but nobody would seriously defend maintaining crime and ill health on the basis simply of employment. If something is wrong, it is wrong.
Then they painted heart-rending pictures of having all the hounds put down. Quite apart from the prospect of substantial re-deployment into trail hunting, when did you last see a geriatric hound out hunting?
All these arguments will doubtless be heard again in the not too distant future but back to where I came in: genuine trail hunting involves no cruelty, provides a great ride in the big outdoors and brings with it employment. But it is rightly now at risk and all because some people think they are above the law.
It is being claimed that the doctors’ strike might have prevented some patients, especially the elderly, from going home for Christmas. Of more concern is that all year round much- needed beds are not freed up because of bloated bureaucracy and , sadly, sometimes family indifference.
Some years ago, I participated in a programme called Celebrities on the NHS Front Line. Among the many pressures which I was shown was the absolutely hopeless business of discharging patients ,especially those who were still ill enough to need attention or who were elderly or otherwise infirm. First of all there was, as usual, far too much reliance on the rule book.
For example people who were going home to live alone but to be visited regularly by appointed carers had to prove that the carers had keys to their houses. It was not enough simply to leave a key under a mat for the neighbour or to organise for the key to be picked up from a neighbour but rather one man was being refused discharge because Social Services had specified that he must have a special key container attached to the wall near his door!! There was a delay fitting it, so his discharge was similarly delayed.
Then there was the role of families. One man who was rung up to be told that his father would be ready for discharge in two or three days replied that he was going abroad for work and that the hospital would have to keep him for another week. In another case the wife said that she could not bring her husband home because she was filing for divorce! And so the stories abounded.
I myself witnessed the holdups caused by the provision of medication. The rules were that a nurse had to go down to the hospital pharmacy, collect the medication and bring it back to the ward to be checked again by Ward Sister and only then was the patient allowed to leave. The notion that the patient could himself or herself pick up the medication from the pharmacy against a prescription before leaving, in the way that all out- patients do, was apparently unthinkable.
Even dafter was the rule which specified that a patient could not sit in the day room, awaiting discharge, in case the discharge failed and there was no bed. Therefore beds were kept vacant for hours on end and similarly patients who had been brought in by ambulance were kept waiting for those same hours on end.
Until somebody finally gets a grip over that bloated bureaucratic approach there will go on being quite unnecessary pressure as well as the unavoidable sort on those who are trying to care for the sick.
It would not be Christmas without the King’s Speech and the annual appearance of the Royal Family going to church at Sandringham. Of course all the press and media focussed on the absence of the erstwhile Prince Andrew. It is reported, whether accurately or inaccurately, that the King was willing to draw back a bit and take some of the pressure off his brother but that Prince William was relentless and insisted on every last drop of humiliation being squeezed from a man who has been convicted of nothing.
If that reporting was accurate or even semi-accurate, then I never want to hear Prince William pontificating about mental health ever again.
And once again, Happy New year!