Author Archives: Judy Abel

Judy Abel

Mobile phones – one person’s freedom can be another person’s lack of it

By Judy Abel | Tue 27th August 2024 - 11:00 am

Individually, we have almost all benefitted from the wonders of mobile phones – communicating with family and friends in ways only dreamt of before, booking tickets for trains or exhibitions at the last minute, being told how to get from A to B and booking GP appointments (which, yes, does digitally exclude some people too).

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Judy Abel

Covid: two years on the Government has abandoned any form of public health strategy

By Judy Abel | Thu 24th March 2022 - 2:17 pm

In March 2020, just before the first lockdown, I penned a piece for Lib Dem Voice on the Government being behind the curve in implementing Covid restrictions. Last year in March 2021, I wrote a follow-up article saying we weren’t out of the woods. Now another year on, where are we?

The Office for National Statistics estimated in the week ending 12 March that around 3.3 million people in the UK had COVID-19. Of course, sadly, this increase in cases is now leading to increased hospitalisations and deaths. According to official statistics, There were 13,844 people admitted to hospital with Covid in the week to 19 March and there were 877 deaths in the 7 days to 23 March (up 133 on the previous week).

The fact that Covid patients are now filling up more beds in hospital again means that non-urgent treatment and operations are more likely to be cancelled – compounded by the fact that NHS hospitals are facing critical under-staffing, both because of existing staff shortages and because more NHS staff are now themselves off sick with Covid.

Many health experts are deeply concerned about all this. Where is the plan? Almost all restrictions have now been lifted, certainly in England, and people can no longer protect themselves in public spaces such as on trains and in shops as mask wearing has fallen off sharply. For people who are clinically vulnerable – maybe because they have an immunological disorder or because they on medication that lowers their immunity – this is quite a frightening prospect. The fact that the Government is now introducing fourth Covid jabs for people aged over 75 or those who are clinically vulnerable is very welcome, but otherwise letting Covid rip through the population seems irresponsible, especially as there is evidence that more people are becoming reinfected with the newer Omicron variant. The herd immunity argument never worked.

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Judy Abel

The damage caused by this Government now includes psychological harm – we need them gone

By Judy Abel | Wed 12th January 2022 - 10:55 am

This morning I was looking on Twitter at the heartbreaking messages from people who had not been able to see their loved ones before they died in May 2020 due to the Covid rules in force at the time, or to attend family funerals or visit relatives in care homes. These are deeply hurtful and scarring experiences.

I also thought to myself, how do most people feel about being told in the Spring of 2020 that they could, legally, only meet up with one person outdoors, now they know that there were parties with 30 or more people held in Downing Street at the very same time? Or about members of the public being fined by the police for breaking the same rules the Prime Minister introduced – yet broke – himself whilst, of course, concealing the truth from everyone?

I turned to thinking about Brexit and the damage and uncertainty caused to multiple interests, especially famers and fishing communities, but also to students and people who used to move regularly between the UK and the EU. This article is not about comparing the tragedies of Covid and Brexit, as Covid is infinitely worse due to the enormity of the loss of life and the associated heartache, but it is about the same way the Conservative Government has handled these two major catastrophes and continues to do so – and the kind of damage their duplicity has surely done to many people’s mental health.

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Judy Abel

One year on from the first lockdown: still not out of the woods

By Judy Abel | Wed 17th March 2021 - 4:00 pm

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a blog for Lib Dem Voice on the Government being behind the curve in introducing measures to curb the spread of Covid-19. Little did we know then what was coming then. By 21 March last year, there had already been more than 400 deaths from Covid in UK hospitals , and that seemed shocking at the time. A year later, there have been 125,580 deaths within 28 days of a Covid test  and 143,259 deaths where Covid was listed as the cause on the death certificate (all data in this article are quoted to 15 March 2021). This amounts to one of the highest Covid death rates in the world.

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Judy Abel

Has the Government been behind the curve in implementing coronavirus measures – and if so why?

By Judy Abel | Sat 21st March 2020 - 9:01 am

It appears that the UK Government has, at times, been slow-footed over dealing with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, reacting to events rather than leading on them. The first example was when the FA decided to suspend professional football matches to halt the spread of COVID-19, ahead of the Government banning mass gatherings a few days later in a policy U-turn on 13 March.

Then there were calls by experts last weekend (14/15 March) for social distancing and homeworking to be implemented, as we watched on while the World Health Organization said social distancing was vital to halt the spread of the virus, but nothing was being implemented on the ground. Hundreds of scientists supported an open letter to the Government on 14 March pressing for ‘more restrictive measures’ to contain the coronavirus. Jeremy Hunt, the former Health and Social Care Secretary, had also expressed serious concerns about the Government’s strategy in a Newsnight interview just days before. Eventually, on 16 March, Public Health England set out guidance on social distancing and Boris Johnson announced that social distancing was now all-important and that people should work from home and stay away from bars and restaurants*, a move which was widely welcomed, although many thought he could have gone further.

That same turbulent weekend of 14/15 March, Government policy announcements were being pushed out to an inner circle journalists like Robert Peston. His Twitter feed on 14 March read: “Elderly to be quarantined at home or in care homes for four months, in ‘wartime-style’ mobilisation” (an idea later watered down). There was serious disquiet on social media about the Government announcing measures like this with little transparency and accountability, so on Monday 16 March daily No 10 press briefings were instituted with Boris Johnson flanked by the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Officer….but would this have happened without all the pressure?

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Judy Abel

It’s time for politicians who campaigned for Brexit to admit they were wrong

By Judy Abel | Fri 4th January 2019 - 1:30 pm

In most walks of life when people make mistakes, they generally have to admit to them, but not in politics it seems. If a press release goes out with the wrong data, a correction is quickly issued; corrections to factual errors are regularly printed in newspapers. But we’ve had no apologies from anyone about the current Brexit shambles.

Well, it’s high time the politicians who led us down the garden path on Brexit owned up to their mistakes. Their claims were false, their facts were wrong and many of their predictions were wildly inaccurate. People are weary of the ‘£350m a week for the NHS on the side of the bus’ example, but it encapsulates all the naïve, jingoistic and unresearched claims made by the Brexiteers. Liam Brexit said that achieving the Brexit deal would be “the easiest thing in human history.” Oh really?

Little concessions to the truth are coming out here and there: for example, last week Michael Gove admitted the ‘grim, inescapable’ reality facing farmers under a no-deal Brexit. But with the Department of Health ordering fridges to stockpile medicines at great expense, and the Department of Transport signing a contract with Seaborne (a sea freight company with no ships) to take goods in and out of ports other than Dover to relieve lorry congestion, it is clear that any so-called ‘Brexit dividend’ is fast disappearing.

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Judy Abel

Mobile phones: do parents need to turn them off as much as their children?

By Judy Abel | Thu 4th October 2018 - 10:13 am

Today whilst sitting in a local café I saw something vaguely disturbing – which I seem to see almost every day now. This may be rather an unusual subject for a blog, but I just had to sit down and write this piece. A parent had obviously just picked up his daughter from school – she was maybe five or six year’s old – and taken her out for a well-meaning treat. But after five minutes or so, I noticed her just staring out of the window. The father was on his mobile phone for almost the entire length of the time that I was there – at least twenty minutes, if not longer.

The child would intermittently try to get her father’s attention, saying look at this or that, but he would glance across at her with a quick smile and then carry on scrolling – and scrolling, not taking any meaningful interest in what she was saying. They were in my line of sight so I could not escape the whole thing. The little girl was trying so hard to engage with her father, but his attention was elsewhere. In the end I think she just gave up. Maybe he had something very important to sort out, it is not for me to judge, but I have seen this pattern of behaviour repeated many times – especially on train journeys. It is strange how we so often criticise children and adolescents for spending too much time on their phones, when their parents can be at least as culpable. Sometimes there are also safety implications; I have seen the parents of small children using their phones whilst crossing the road, with their young charges walking ahead unsupervised.

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Judy Abel

With more money coming to the NHS do we need to rethink how it’s spent?

By Judy Abel | Mon 25th June 2018 - 12:42 pm

While some of the major health think tanks such as The King’s Fund say the announced 3.4% increase in annual NHS spending is not enough – and I would agree with that – can we at least use the additional NHS funding more efficiently? I would say it might be worth looking at changing some long-established patterns of patient care.

Let’s start by looking at primary care. Currently it is estimated that around half of all GP appointments are for just two kinds of conditions – musculoskeletal (MSK) problems (accounting for a fifth of all GP appointments) and mental health problems …

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Judy Abel

How can the Lib Dems get back to the centre of the pitch?

By Judy Abel | Mon 2nd April 2018 - 2:12 pm

In January, I wrote a piece about the Liberal Democrats needing to ask themselves some tough questions about their low poll ratings. At the time, I also promised to write a follow up article on some potential solutions. Here it is – for what it’s worth!

There is an open goal in the centre of British politics, but somehow the Liberal Democrats are not really scoring in the polls, despite some positive announcements on education, for example, which received good media coverage. What do we need to do to turn things around on a significant scale? It’s certainly not easy. …

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Judy Abel

As we see disarray in so many aspects of public life, do the Lib Dems need to ask themselves some very tough questions?

By Judy Abel | Fri 12th January 2018 - 3:45 pm

As I read the news, probably like you, I am astonished at the almost unending stream of bad news in the UK – before we even get to Brexit.

Over just the past few weeks we’ve seen debilitating and potentially life-threatening patient logjams in A&E Departments, not to mention non-urgent surgery being cancelled across the NHS in England during January. Rail transport is becoming dire with constant delays for commuters, despite rail fares in the UK being amongst the highest in the world. And what of crime? Law and order may not always have been a top policy priority for the Lib Dems, but Caroline Pidgeon has done much to highlight knife crime in the capital over the past couple of years; nonetheless there were a staggering 80 fatal stabbings in London last year.

Random, incomprehensible, inequalities also abound across the UK. Why is it in England that students pay tuition fees, when in Scotland no such fees apply? Also, how can it be that students are having to repay their loans at extortionate 6% interest rates? There are also no prescription charges in Scotland and Wales, only in England. How can that be right and fair? Don’t get me wrong, I am neither in favour of tuition fees or prescription charges, but it’s the blatant lack of a level playing field in different parts of the UK which is astonishing.

Other stories continue to paint the picture of a society in a state of degeneration: just one such item caught my eye in the Guardian this week: educational support for England’s 45,000 deaf children is reported to be “in complete disarray” by the National Deaf Children’s Society with a dwindling number of specialist teachers in mainstream schools. Such losses of essential services point to a degradation of our public life and values. The inhumane conditions in some prisons, reflected in high prisoner suicide rates, is another example of decline and disarray in the public sector. On and on it goes.

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Judy Abel

In this campaign let’s not focus too hard on Brexit: other things matter to people too

By Judy Abel | Wed 26th April 2017 - 9:55 am

As well as appealing to the 48% of voters who are deeply disenchanted with Brexit, I think there are many other policy areas we need to focus on, if we are to make an electoral breakthrough.

In this week alone, there have been three fatal stabbings in London, innocent people (all men) aged 17, 40 and 60, robbed of their lives because of mindless violence. We have to show that we care about violence and people having the right to live in peaceful streets and neighbourhoods.

Let’s also tackle the inequitable housing situation, whereby overseas buyers are buying up London’s properties at prices that are completely unaffordable for locals – who often aren’t even given a chance to buy them before they are marketed overseas, as apparently happened with the new Heygate development in South East London. Switzerland has placed restrictions on foreign buyers, why can’t we?

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Judy Abel

The EU: did we ever really belong?

By Judy Abel | Mon 11th July 2016 - 11:19 am

In just over two weeks pro-EU people have gone from despondency to incredulity as we have seen a succession of Conservative MPs topple each other over Europe, seemingly unconcerned about the damage that has been done to the country by the Leave vote. The Labour Party too are in disarray over this issue and only the Lib Dems are going forward on a pro-EU footing – even though it looks like the country is now heading for the exit door.

But Europe has actually been a divisive issue for political leaders since we first joined the EEC in 1973 and this whole saga, sadly, feels like the final scene in a 40-year soap opera. The political pundits tell us that Europe was the undoing of John Major, and David Cameron has now lost his job because of it. And ever since we joined, successive governments would go to Brussels with the begging bowl, always wanting special treatment for Britain, rather than wanting to get stuck in and build a better Europe.

It seems to me that many of our leaders – and clearly many in the nation at large – never really embraced Europe or, perhaps, even understood it. Many people just wouldn’t know that over many years, a lot of our best social and environmental legislation originated from laws passed in Brussels, and that much infrastructure was built in the poorer regions of the UK with EU money. It has now entered our common folklore that the most searched for term on Google the day after the Referendum was, “What is the EU?”

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Judy Abel

It must be possible to be 100% pro-EU, but still question how things are run

By Judy Abel | Mon 25th April 2016 - 2:12 pm

 

I’m half Danish and consider myself to be a European. I have never really felt particularly English or British at all and if Denmark is playing England at football it’s a tough call, even though I’ve lived in the UK almost all my life and spent a total of only two years in Denmark.

I have always been pro-EU. I believe in political co-operation and the European ideal – and have often considered other European countries to be more enlightened when it comes to matters such as social justice and environmental protection. Without the EU, I am sure we wouldn’t have had Blue Flag beaches or the equivalent, tighter car emission regulations (although they’ve been flouted badly in recent years) and proper food labelling. Whereas, in my experience, Danish Governments of whatever shade tend to want to ensure the quality of life and wellbeing of their populations, that enlightened approach sadly hasn’t been a particularly strong feature of British life – although it does appear to be something Scotland wants to follow (hence no tuition fees and prescription charges).

Whilst agreeing with the provisions of the Single Market in terms of the free movement of goods, service and people, this doesn’t stop me asking certain questions about the efficacy of the EU and what we might be able to do better. All institutions need to adapt and evolve to changing circumstances and the EU cannot be an exception to that.

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Judy Abel

Is regulation becoming the new religion?

By Judy Abel | Wed 9th March 2016 - 9:27 am

 

In whatever field you care to mention – whether it is education, services or business – employers and organisations are checking up on us as never before.

Recently my car broke down in Glastonbury, so I called the AA. Out came the AA repair person, who did a great job, but he then asked me to rate the service he had provided on a tablet, by clicking on a happy face, sad face, or categories in between. Not only that, I got a follow up phone call asking me whether he had done a good job. Why couldn’t the AA just let me call to complain I there had been a problem? This all creates so much pressure on working people.

Last time I went to my GP surgery there was a plastic plinth asking me to rate my experience, with the happy and sad faces again. I tried to type in a message saying “Stop checking up on people, the pressure on staff must be intolerable”, but the message box vanished! On the back of many lorries there is a number to call, inviting us to rate the lorry driver’s performance – and on it goes. And, in my experience, when performance-related pay is introduced in a company the spirit of collegiality can quickly turn into one of competitiveness and dissatisfaction.

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Judy Abel

Party membership: is it possible with a ‘coalition’ mindset?  

By Judy Abel | Mon 21st December 2015 - 9:25 am

 

In the autumn, I received reminders about my soon-to-lapse Lib Dem membership. When I joined last year, I partly did so in response to the Christians in Politics ‘Show Up’ campaign which argued that it didn’t matter so much which party you joined, so long as you got involved and  made a difference. It was a really good campaign, but this time around I have been thinking more carefully about what it means to be a member.

Like many people, I suspect, I’ve a ‘coalition’ mindset:  probably around 65% Lib Dem (agreeing with the party on issues such as Europe, health, green issues, housing and the freedom of the individual); 25% Labour  (supporting more state ownership of assets such as the railways, and better employment rights for working people); and 10% Conservative (for example, I supported Michael Gove’s education reforms which put a greater emphasis on formal English and Maths skills: my children’s generation weren’t taught spelling and grammar, which has put them at a significant disadvantage compared to graduates from other European countries).

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Judy Abel

Is aiming at Coalition shooting at the wrong goal?

By Judy Abel | Mon 28th September 2015 - 3:41 pm

 

I couldn’t go to Conference so listened to Tim Farron’s speech on i-player afterwards. What a great speech: full of idealism, commitment and determination. We’re so lucky to have Tim as leader.

But there was one thing that really worried me.  I had already seen reports in the news that morning that Tim was going to talk about getting back into Government again in 2020 – about how going into Coalition had been the right thing to do. Looking at the decimation of the Party and the loss of so many first-class MPs I am still not so sure about that, but leaving the past aside, is Coalition what the Lib Dems should be aiming for now, and more importantly saying what we are aiming for? I would generally say not.

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Judy Abel

The Lib Dems: We need to fight back for the many, not just the few

By Judy Abel | Mon 10th August 2015 - 2:49 pm

 

I am really pleased that Tim Farron won the leadership election, because of his energy, commitment and strong sense of social justice – and I am really impressed that Tim went to Calais to see for himself what is going on there – but I do have some concerns about where the Party may be heading. Of course, it is early days, but over the summer the coverage of the Lib Dems in the media has been mostly around ‘fringe’ issues such as Tim’s comments about the SNP and his faith perspective. That may fit in nicely with the media’s ‘Lib Dem agenda’, but we shouldn’t be boxed in as a minority party that has little to say to the wider electorate. Having just read Tim’s policy priorities in Caron Linday’s article posted a few days ago, with the exception of housing, I remain concerned.

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Judy Abel

Opinion: Sexual Assault and Fear of Sexual Assault: A Civil Liberties Issue

By Judy Abel | Fri 29th May 2015 - 9:35 am

I recently went to the Lake District for a short break. I was walking alone in a relatively remote area with no one much around and when going through a small campsite a man came out and stared persistently as I went past. The thought went through my mind I wonder if he’s going to follow me. He didn’t, but I sat down some yards on and the thought dawned on me that for virtually my entire life I have had to process the risks of sometimes travelling alone, walking in remote places alone and going home late alone. That’s when I decided to write this article for LDV.

When I was at university there was a serial rapist on the loose in Bristol so we were told to ‘be careful’’ Friends at a better university down the road had to deal with a similar scenario. Every once in a while, and certainly too often, we hear of a woman who has disappeared after leaving a nightclub, a scenario that usually ends in tragedy. Those of us old enough may remember the fate of Rachel Nickell some years ago, innocently jogging on Wimbledon Common in broad daylight. This situation represents a basic infringement of women’s human rights. Women are used to making risk assessments all the time, about where it’s safe to go, particularly late at night, by what mode of transport and in what clothes, but why should we have to?

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Judy Abel

Opinion: We shouldn’t position ourselves as the ‘Middle of the Road’ Party

By Judy Abel | Mon 27th April 2015 - 9:02 am

 

I am hesitant to write another article for LDV so soon after my last one on polling, but with the General Election so close now, I am going to put my head above the parapet on the matter of the Party’s seeming decision to steer us right down the middle.

Having looked at the Lib Dem Manifesto in some detail when recently writing some articles for the LDCF, I was surprised to see how many progressive and innovative policies there really are in there. I am worried though, that if we keep saying we ‘Won’t spend as much as Labour or cut as much as the Tories’, we will simply become more and more ‘invisible’. The whole ‘Look Right, Look Left and Cross’ thing also seems to present the same image of the Liberal Democrats as standing for nothing in particular – and certainly nothing to get excited about.

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Judy Abel

Opinion: Has the polling got out of hand?

By Judy Abel | Mon 20th April 2015 - 2:50 pm

May2015In this run up to the election we have been bombarded with opinion polls on who is going to win the election – or not to win it, as it now seems.  Looking at the May2015.com website, which tracks polling results, in the month to 18th April, 53 polls were published, an average of almost two a day. On 9th April for example five separate polls were published. I don’t know if the same people have been asked several times, but the results seem amazingly consistent!

I, like some others, have some concerns about this plethora of polls. Firstly, if two or three polls are published every day, quite frankly, what is the point? They completely lose their impact and are quickly discounted because new opinion polls – and betting odds! – appear the very next day.

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Judy Abel

Opinion: Plain Packaging: Will Tobacco Be the End or Just the Beginning?

By Judy Abel | Thu 26th March 2015 - 8:55 am

While I think I was pleased to see the vote by MPs earlier this month, introducing plain packaging for tobacco products, it did also set off faint alarm bells – with me at least. There is something rather drastic about passing a law that requires legally produced and distributed goods to be wrapped in plain card or paper – even if the move was approved by Parliament based on medical evidence. I almost feel it would have been better to actually ban tobacco products altogether.

To be honest, obesity is not that far behind smoking as a leading cause of early death. We know that obesity is partly fuelled by attractively-packaged foods, high in sugar and fat, freely available on every supermarket shelf in the UK. High-street fast food chains – whose rise has been, seemingly, unstoppable – are another contributor to the problem. Britain now spends over £45 billion each year dealing with the health and social care costs associated with an increasingly overweight population.  

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Judy Abel

Opinion: Why don’t we throw out the spending plans and start again?

By Judy Abel | Thu 12th March 2015 - 4:04 pm

When parties come up with their public spending plans, one gets a sense of deckchairs being rearranged on the Titanic, with a bit more spending on something one year and then a little bit less the next, parties micromanaging (and re-announcing!) their spending plans, making compromises and trying to spread the ‘jam’ ever more thinly.

Of course no one is really fooled. We all know that the number of district nurses has almost halved in a decade, that libraries have closed all over the country, that adult education services have been cut to the bone and that those on benefits such as Jobseekers Allowance are having to jump through ever more hoops to get their money. There have been serious cuts in social care services for the most vulnerable too. This may sound harsh, but it is the reality of living in Britain today.

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Judy Abel

Opinion: Mental health – is prevention a potential solution?

By Judy Abel | Wed 11th February 2015 - 2:55 pm

Just as public health experts develop strategies to tackle binge drinking, smoking and obesity, do we need to develop a more comprehensive approach to preventing mental ill health? With youth depression, alone, having doubled in the last 20 years, maybe it’s time to look again at ways to prevent mental health problems from taking their toll at different stages in our lives. It’s complicated, but here are just some thoughts on what might help.

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Judy Abel

Opinion: Should we take the ‘Mental’ out of Mental Health?

By Judy Abel | Tue 2nd December 2014 - 1:57 pm

Thanks to the work of Norman Lamb and other Liberal Democrat MPs, mental health has risen up the political agenda. For many years, NHS spending on mental health has lagged far behind that of other conditions and research into treatments for mental illness has also been disproportionately low.  MIND recently estimated that local authorities in England spend, on average, only 1.36 per cent of their total public health budgets on mental health – even though such problems cost the country an estimated £100 billion a year.

The aspiration of policymakers now is to achieve ‘parity of esteem’ between mental and physical health, the subject of much debate in the health policy world.

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Judy Abel

Opinion: The legalisation of drugs – let’s not take the line of least resistance

By Judy Abel | Mon 17th November 2014 - 12:03 pm

drugsIt’s 1977…. a hot summer evening in Chicago (no – this is not the start of a Raymond Chandler novel). I’m getting a lift back from an outer suburb to the city which takes around an hour on the freeway. It’s late. The driver is going illegally fast. He’s desperate to get home he tells me – so he can smoke some dope. I am desperate to get back in one piece.  I suppose the only thing that might have made his driving worse is if he had actually already smoked the stuff. But that’s what addiction does – it makes people a bit desperate. And make no mistake, cannabis can be addictive.

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