The day before yesterday, I received a pleasant surprise through the post. This was the ‘Health and Welfare’ component of the Lasting Power of Attorney documents which now come in two parts, the first being ‘Property and Financial Affairs’. We had already got these in place for Meg before she died and I did not really use the documents although the local authority. for whatever reason, needed a copy forwarding to them for their records. The website that guides through the process is really very straightforward and my son and I went through the process in the Autumn. One document was straightforward but in another we had got some of the dates in the wrong sequence and parts of it had to be resubmitted. But this has now gone through the system and is duly registered and recorded. I had always imagined that these legal documents had to be seen by a judge or a court but I am mistaken in this belief. But it does take a process of weeks after submission for the documents to be finally validated and returned to you. In my own case, it is straightforward insofar as my son or daughter-in-law are now the nominated persons and I am relieved that this is now in place. If you leave it until it is ‘too late’ i.e. following an accident or admission to a residential home, then without an LPA, relatives are involved in a long, complex and expensive procedure so it is much better to have these things in place way before they are actually needed. Now that the New Year has arrived, I probably need to turn my attention to updating my will (which is 18 years old and things have happened in the meantime) and, in about a month. my son and I are going to make a trip into Worcester to pay off the remainder of the small mortgage I took out when my son and daughter-in-law moved out of this house. My family and I are starting some of the ‘decluttering’ process because being a dormer bungalow there are several small access points to the eaves which we have fondly called ‘hobbitt holes’ and these have been used for storage of little used items such as old suitcases. So we are going to do about one of these a week and then the material that is found can either be thrown away or a few precious items retained. My Tai Chi teacher has written to us indicating that classes are due to resume in the forthcoming week as will my Pilates and I just want to return to a routine of normality as it were.
A shocking political story is being exposed by the Liberal Democrats this morning. Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of diverting £3 billion of NHS funding a year to appease Donald Trump. Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, said taxpayers’ money was being ‘rerouted at the request of Donald Trump’ from frontline NHS services ‘into the pockets of big pharmaceutical companies’. At the beginning of December, the UK agreed to pay 25% more for new medicines by 2035 to stop the US imposing trade tariffs on pharmaceutical products. The deal involves an increase in the baseline threshold used to assess whether medicines can be offered by the NHS. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) will increase the threshold by 25%: from £20,000-£30,000 to £25,000-£35,000. The government says this means NICE will be able to approve innovative medicines that deliver significant health improvements but might have previously been declined on cost-effectiveness grounds. It has suggested the deal will cost around £1bn a year by 2029. Others, including the Lancet medical journal, have said the cost to the NHS will be £3bn. Exact costs will depend on how many medicines are approved under the new system.
The news media was agog this morning with the (probably, quite illegal) invasion of Venezuela by the United States and the capture of the Venezuelan president who has taken aboard a US warship and will then be taken (and tried and probably imprisoned) in the United States. This story will unfold throughout the day so more of this when details emerge but it delayed me walking down into town. As well as the evident flouting of international law, I am rather dismayed by the reaction of Keir Starmer and other European leaders who refuse to issue a word of criticism of Trump in all of these nefarious activities. Starmer is saying ‘we must wait for the full facts to emerge’ whereas the facts are already known and spattered across the media in that the US have invaded another country, captured its president and is then transporting him to the US. If this is s not an act of war, then I not know what is but the US constitution reserves the right to wage war on the approval of Congress which has not been sought. The MAGA crowd are being somewhat silent because whilst they might admire the a ‘strong’ president and the use of the military to pursue America’s aims, Trump came to power on the premise of stopping all wars and certainly not starting one. If Trump had any hopes of attaining a peace prize, then these hopes must surely by now have evaporated like a snowball in June. On my way out, I bumped into my next door neighbour and we will will have a little Christmas drink together, probably in his house as his wife has only just had a hip operation. I walked into town, wrapping up very well against the cold and aware that it may well get even colder over the next day or so. In Waitrose, I spent a leisurely amount of time slowly reading the weekend pages of ‘The Times’ which contained many features best described as ‘makeover’ in terms of diet, exercise, lifestyle, and finances. One particular feature was of great interest as it was written by an Asian doctor who is going to present a special programme next Thursday evening but the major import of which seems to be that there are all kinds of things we can do to improve our health, fitness and well-being by approaches which dispense with all drugs and medications. This sounds an innovative approach and I shall study the article in the newspaper with great care. When I got home, I cooked myself a gammon steak and supplemented by this with an onion/tomato/sprout type of fry-up mainly to use some of the stocks of items left over from the Christmas period. Later in the evening, church beckons but it is not very pleasant going out when the weather is as cold as this. Mu University of Birmingham friend is away for the weekend so I am having to amuse myself for a few days. I will probably make a start removing some of he Christmas decorations but I only fancy doing this in the light.