Virtual Methodist

During the pandemic, after a few months I erased the word "unprecedented" from my vocabulary, but it is back again, with a vengeance. Not the pandemic, although COVID-19 hasn't gone away by any means... But that word, as the NHS, or the HSC as it strictly is in NI, is under unprecedented pressure. Every winter produces a blip... I saw that clearly in my 14 years as a critical hospital chaplain up to 2018, but there is no doubt that underfunding since 2010 with the "austerity" policy of the Westminster government, poor human resource planning in terms of training, recruitment and retention of staff (which also requires funding), and the repeated refusal of our local assembly to implement review after review because of a short-sighted and parochial approach to strategic planning, together with the after-effects of the pandemic, have eviscerated the ability of our dedicated health professionals to deal with the tsunami of needs they are facing. I could rant at leng...

12,000 patients left for 12 hours on trolleys - Daily Mail Two-tier plan to solve crisis in A&E service - The Guardian NHS Nurse Shut Baby in Cupboard - The Sun Doctors Deserting A&E - The Times Foreign NHS Cheats Push Aside Cancer Patients - Sunday Express Hospital Hit by Fresh Fears over Falsified Cancer Records - The Observer Hospital Food Investigation as Patients Fed on £4 a Day - The Herald Babies and Mothers at Risk from Midwife Shortage - the i Warning to Doctors as Threat of Superbug Resurfaces - The Herald Crisis in Maternity Care 'Putting Lives at Risk' - The Independent Boy Victim of Hospital in Police Probe - Daily Mail Hospital 'Fakes' Cancer Records - the i Hospitals Full to Bursting - The Times Hospital Faces Claim of Cancer Care Cover-Up - The Guardian That is just one week of front page headlines from the national daily newspapers... And this is by no means the worst for NHS-kicking.  I've said it before and I will sa...

I've effectively been offline for a couple of days thanks to ongoing technical difficulties together with a lack of time in which to address them properly... I'll be back on the phone tomorrow... Anyway, that has meant I've missed a couple of days of "thanksgiving" as per my most recent self-imposed blogging discipline... Had that not be the case yesterday I would definitely have been thanking those who helped out at our Coffee Morning at the manse and those who donated to the Save a Heart Campaign which we were raising money for, a scheme whereby a team from the Royal Victoria Hospital Cardiothoracic Department are helping to revitalise cardiac care in Nigeria. In the light of that, on Friday I had planned to put on record, yet again, my thankfulness for our own wonderful, if much-derided, National Health Service and the privilege it is to work as a chaplain within it. But I may well come back to that later in the month... But for today I offer an awkward ...

On this Saturday when the Orange Order has proposed another parade along the contentious Crumlin Road in North Belfast... a proposal which, in my mind, as recklessly provocative and rightly restricted by the Parades Commission, most of the internet snippets that have caught my eye this week relate to last week's Twelfth Parade and it's aftermath... First was a piece by Alan in Belfast, posted on the Slugger O'Toole site last month, but which I only saw this week, critiquing the BBC coverage of the Twelfth Parades in the wake of the corporation's assessment that its coverage in  2012 had complied with its own impartiality guidelines... I have to say that I agree with Alan's analysis, not suggesting that the BBC's coverage should be reduced, but should be more imaginative and informative. However, this year's coverage was just more of the same, suggesting that the Beeb has a lot to learn... But nothing like as much to learn as the Orange Order. Again, ...

My post of yesterday seems to have struck a chord or two given the amount of traffic it has generated on the site... That's encouraging, as I was very reluctant to post it, because, contrary to popular perception I'm not grumpy about everything all the time. I'm forever telling my congregation that we are good news people not bad news, so in contrast to my 12 mid-winter gripes of yesterday, here are 12 signs of hope that keep me going. They are not direct responses to the issues I raised, but are examples of the things that remind me that, in the midst of a fallen world, God in his grace is at work redeeming and renewing that which he once looked on and called good... So here goes: The commitment of Christian people across the UK to help the poorest in society through food pantries and other initiatives, including the Trussell Trust Foodbanks which have grown into a 300 strong network over the past 13 years, with 100 being established in the last year... with, hopefu...

A couple of times this week I've come across this site offering "26 Moments that restore your Faith in Humanity this Year."  Once a fortnight... that's not a bad average... Check it out, it might brighten your day... This year has been a real stinker for me and my family, what with multiple major injuries to Owain, necessitating him having to miss his AS levels and go back a year at school, another football injury to myself which had major complications, DFCI having to wind up because of the lack of funding, resulting in Sally losing her job, never mind the whole stress of the school transfer system for Ciaran... and a few work-related "complications". It will be a real pity if the Mayans were right and the world ends next week, because it wouldn't be a great one to finish on... But against the background of that let me offer 12 glimpses of grace that have helped us through the bumps and grinds of this year... averaging once a month... 1) Th...

This, as well as being, in some ways, an update on my post for Friday last, was also, originally intended to be the basis of my Thought for the Day tomorrow morning... but it is of such epic length (reading a little like a "Book of Job Lite") I couldn't see any way of reducing it to the requisite 2 minutes and 30 seconds... So thought I'd post it here anyway as a form of catharsis... Is being accident-prone hereditary? The experiences of my eldest son and I might suggest that it is… Especially this year… Since January we’ve had a number of sport-related injuries (nothing new to us, they've just happened slightly more frequently than usual)… First I cracked a rib at football, then a rugby scrum collapsed on him injuring his neck and shoulders… in March I was only back at football 2 weeks when someone kicked my in the back of the calf rupturing the muscle…  But the real fun and games began four weeks ago… I’d said on Thought for the Day that morning that I had dr...

Just incase anyone interested in the issue of chaplaincy missed the comment which Dr. Presswood appended to the post prompted by his appearance on the Today programme , you will find his comments on chaplaincy here. He protests loudly about not being anti-religious per-se but his tone is (as in the aforementioned Radio 4 appearance), patronising, using terms like "credulity", accusing chaplains roles as "morphing" while he portrays the attitudes of others in healthcare as "improving". His reference to scripture is not only extremely selective but misleading, both in terms of actual referencing (it is 2 John chapter 1 verse 7 rather than John chapter 2 verse 7, which would have been a reference to Jesus turning water into wine... which chaplains only rarely do...) but also emphasis, as the context of " John 1: 2  for example is not about heathens or non-believers but about "super-spiritual" individuals who regard physical existence as unimp...

This morning I awoke to news of a major report criticising the care of elderly people in Northern Irish residential homes .  As a minister I'm in and out of various residential and nursing homes and I am compiling a list of ones that I would rather die than go into. There are many reasons, or at least excuses for this, including the profit motive (another of the reasons to keep the private sector out of the NHS), but one commentator suggested that some of the problems come from the attitude of our society in general to older people, and to our tendency to look on the outside and forget about the person inside.  It reminded me of the following poem which I used at our last Healthcare Sunday service . At the time I attributed it to a Christian nurse, Phyllis McCormack who was working in an old people’s residential home when she witnessed an incident between a member of staff and an old person which was handled with a lack of sensitivity. The material I read suggested t...

Happy new year... At least I hope it is for you! I began the New Year with a stinking cold that has crept down into my chest and "maketh much mucus..." However, it is only a cold (not that disparaging ailment "man flu")... and my moans and groan were put into perspective by news on new year's day of a friend being in intensive care with swine flu... She seems to be slowly improving, but isn't entirely out of the woods yet... Christmas brought another set of contrasts... We were due to have another friend and her mother from America with us for Christmas dinner, but a few days beforehand, that friend ended up in hospital with diverticulitis and a perforated intestine. She was in great pain... and what is worse, our Christmas day plans were thrown up in the air! But at least she was in a hospital being treated (without cost to herself)... Just after we got home from visiting her in hospital on Christmas Day I got a phone call from a colleague telling me that h...

Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half-dead.... a Samaritan, as he travelled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.' Luke 10:30, 33-35 (ANIV) Its a good job that the Samaritan didn't have to cope with privatised health provision or 2 silver coins wouldn't have been enough. According to the Sunday Times last weekend, German driver Resul Mor was flagged down by a man who asked him to take his desperately ill wife to hospital in Hamburg. On arrival hospital staff asked Herr Mor...

Back in the Ulster Hospital yesterday in my role as Chaplain there, and it made me think again about the "good old" NHS that has been recently so badly maligned by US right-wing reactionaries and renegade Tories. Now, as both an employee and a frequent user (both on my own behalf as a Type-2 diabetic, and the parent of a particularly accident-prone child) of the National Health Service, I am more than aware of its short-comings. But I am also personally thankful for and a constant observer of its strengths, and have been getting mightily ticked off by repeated ill-informed criticism from the other side of the Atlantic. At various times I have also had the opportunity to get a close up look at some of the health provision in different parts of the USA, and there is no doubt that at its best, the provision there IS the best in the world. But after all it IS the richest country in the world (at least for the moment) and yet, despite that, there are an inordinate number of people...

Haven't posted anything this weekend as I have been otherwise occupied. I was already operating at top speed trying to get everything ready for Sunday, and trying to clear up stuff in advance of us all heading to the US in less than a fortnight, but then I got a phonecall on Saturday night at 9.30pm telling me that our eldest son Owain was in the casualty department of our local hospital with a suspected broken wrist. So instead of having a nice Fathers' Day lunch at a local hotel, Sally, I and Ciaran spent it in the hospital cafeteria, while Owain fasted, waiting for his surgery, which took place at 8pm last night. Thankfully everything went smoothly, and he was discharged today... Now we await the verdict of the fracture clinic this Friday, regarding the proposed trip to the US. But it is always the same... In 3 out of the past 5 years we have ended up in the fracture clinic with Owain, before heading off on holiday. So it really shouldn't have come as a surprise... Indee...