Waking to a humanitarian crisis and lots of questions

Spines on a plant stem

A night in my own bed again! Fantastic! Though I had to get up before 8 am (on a weekend?!?). Having a shower a bliss, though the rash prickled for a while afterwards.

Turn on the news for breakfast, and it turns out that the Red Cross says we effectively have a humanitarian crisis in the UK with hospitals overstretched and beds blocked by patients that cannot return home because there are no social services to assist.

Roundly contradicted by Keith Willett, director of acute care for NHS England who said that the service was stretched but not that bad.

This adds to the range of contradictory messages being given, with Worcester Infirmary having 15 or more patients on trolleys awaiting beds, one patient's waiting time being up to 38 hours. According to the BBC, 42 A&E departments ordered ambulances to divert to other hospitals last week.

Eyes and nose good enough to let me a) edit the pictures from the walk in the Botanic Gardens on Wednesday and b) catch up on this diary!

Then watched The Big Fat Quiz, Mastermind, Countdown and Pointless. Lots of questions. Answered 3 or 4. Did not get any anagrams or sums right. Brain still blank.

Donald J Trump has tweeted again to show that he has taken the security chief's and his own party's message on board - apparently the Democrat National Committee negligent in allowing themselves to be hacked. (This reminds me of the old chestnut of the woman being at fault if attacked due to  wearing provocative clothing - or just being a woman.) Good news though, he is going to build better relations with Russia, which should prevent future hacking of his government.

The independent online cheerily weighed in with a poll that suggested most people in the west expect WWIII this century!

Watched the David Bowie documentary and the following quote, just after 0:40:45 in to the recording, stuck in my mind as he talked about his fears and apprehensions about the future his daughter was going to grow up in:

"What a disappointing 21st Century this has been so far!"