Back to panic stations

Uncertain. It’s a word I have used many times to describe the pandemic, and it is still relevant as today’s media confirm.

The newspaper headlines tell it vividly with the most startling, Back to Panic Stations.

As usual, the government’s advisers are cast as gloom-spreading merchants. There is blanket coverage for the Prime Minister’s new ‘plan’. 

Like his recent plan for social care reform it is sketchy and indecisive. Typically Johnsonian, it is a combination of dither and hope.

One thing is certain. There is a dangerous winter ahead.

Last year the on-and-off Christmas tale unfolded in the preceding months and it may be no clearer this time.

The government seems as divided as ever on the action to take and is just blundering along, hoping for the best.

Nothing is easy. This pandemic is proving a wily beast which, despite the relief and hope provided by vaccination, has yet to be tamed.

Not a care...

The prime minister’s long-awaited plan for the reform of social care is a massive let down, a damp squib.

It is not a plan, and certainly not the solution to a national disgrace: the way millions of disabled and elderly people are being treated.

Far from urgently tackling the problem, the help offered is not only far too little, its main benefit will not come for two years, and will still not prevent people losing their homes.

Mike Padgam, managing director of the St Cecilia home care group, is scathing in his condemnation of the 'plan’.

‘So, after all the campaigning for over thirty years for a better deal, we have been let down’ he said. ‘All we have is another sticking plaster to get some money into the NHS because it has been battered by Covid.'

The social care system has been fighting Covid side by side with the NHS yet it is still being treated as less important. Proper reform has been booted ‘down the road’.

I am one of masses of elderly people who have had to sell my home and in two years have seen my savings pouring out at an alarming rate, worrying about how long I can afford to meet that cost.

Now we know: we must carry on worrying. Even the main changes announced will not come into effect for two years.

No wonder every organisation involved in caring for the elderly and disabled is fearful for the future.

Down your whey...

In my reporting days I interviewed many people and later, in local government, was interviewed as a spokesman, not at all an easy task.

But one interview I enjoyed was in the long running radio programme, Down Your Way, presented by the excellent, genial Franklin Engelmann.

As public relations officer for Caerphilly council, I had found him a selection of interesting local characters to interview, when he said, ‘Why don’t you come on the programme’?

So I did, giving details of my job and, as with all the interviewees, suggesting a favourite record to be played.

I chose the popular Men of Harlech march from Edward German’s Welsh Rhapsody.

The show went well, apart for one hitch. I had managed to persuade an elderly Caerphilly farmer, John Roberts, who used to produce miniature ‘real’ Caerphilly cheeses for Council VIP guests including once for the Queen, on condition he chose a hymn and said a prayer in his interview.

Franklin Engelmann kept his promise and all went well. Unwisely, when I met the farmer to thank him, he was not at all impressed. 

‘Why’, I asked,

‘You chose the wrong tone for my hymn’, he grumbled  

When I asked the presenter for his autograph for my daughter Beverley he did so, adding a quip I had made, that they programme should have been called Down your Whey.

I  shudder to think what farmer Roberts would have thought of my other joke, ‘What a friend we have in cheeses.’

Reporting decline

I always wanted to be  a reporter, and I was lucky to have an ideal tutor, my Uncle, George Dymond.

After serving in the trenches during the First World War George returned to Cardiff where he became a reporter on the Docks Guardian newspaper.

Over the next fifty years, and throughout the 1939/45 war, he represented all the UK national newspapers and press agencies.

When I was a schoolboy he took me with him reporting stories on his ‘patch’, South Wales. We covered everything, from accidents, pit strikes to murder.

I learned a lot, and when I left Cardiff High School at 16, he arranged my first job interview, with the Penarth Times.

That was the start of my twenty year reporting career that included the South Wales Argus, and, like him, the national newspapers, press agencies and my broadcasting with the BBC. We even covered some of the same stories. I was proud of Uncle George, and proud to be a reporter.

But not any longer. I am so angry at the way popular journalism has developed that I am ashamed to admit having been a reporter.

Over recent years press reporting has changed, dramatically and disastrously, in my view, especially with the tabloids.

In my early reporting days the two most popular papers, the Daily Express and Daily Mail were first class, responsible journals, covering the world with excellent, famous journalists, selling copies by the million.

Today, both papers are, in my view, a disgrace to journalism, with daily, 'War Declared’ size headlines, over-the-top reporting and highly paid big name reporters and columnists writing to order.

So much is negative, inaccurate and dangerous. Reporters, myself included, tend to learn a little about a lot of subjects, enough to present ourselves as experts, then to forget about them.

There is no better example than the debacle of Afghanistan where everyone claims  to be an expert yet knows and cares little about the country, its people or its way of life.

Our press are masters at knowing it all and blaming everyone for events and decisions they do not understand.

Typical is the fury at President Biden for the Kabul retreat yet they know and care little of the complexities of that dire exercise.

On a simpler level, the press have devoted countless stories to the life and death of an alpaca, Geronimo, again displaying a woeful lack of knowledge.

One tabloid devoted four pages to it, making a drama of the removal of the doomed animal, with screaming headlines. And, of course, finding someone to blame.

Some heartrending stories, like the case of Madeleine McCann, the child abducted in Portugal in 2007, run for years. The latest instalment published today, prolongs the anguish of her parents.

Is it surprising that I feel feel ashamed of reporters?

A quieter day

A quieter day, following yesterday's excitement. Thank you for all the messages after the excellent publicity for the book. I am pleased that people may be encouraged to read it and appreciate the effort that has been made - still is - to care for us. I am pleased, too, that Rosa and Claudia's picture with me was included as it is they and the future family who will be able to look back and appreciate what an amazing time this is.

Making the news

The BBC reports on Bob's diary book

An exciting morning. I have just seen the report on BBC Wales online news on my book. I am delighted with it. Radio Wales news also featured it and it may be on BBC Wales television news this evening.

Yesterday’s interview at Sunrise by the BBC reporter was one of the best examples of reporting I have known. 

When I was involved briefly in television 60 years ago it was a ponderous business, with a three-man crew: producer, reporter and cameraman. Now reporters are on their own, jacks and jills of all trades.

Brian Walsh yesterday was brilliant. He was patient, meticulous and totally professional. He had done his research and had chosen the book extracts for me to read. That made it much more direct and personal. 

I did not have to worry about hearing his questions as Sara Reading, the Sunrise general manager, sat nearby, making sure I heard them. 

That hour and a half interview was the most rewarding in my experience and I am glad I remembered the basic lessons I learned so many years ago, to listen carefully to the questions, stay still and answer directly and clearly.

Robert and I think the book is an important record  of the unique pandemic experiences, probably the first such account published.

It needed publicity and we were fortunate to have the very efficient Sunrise press team team led by Anokhi Popat who handled the press releases.

It has been an exciting experience.

Brother Bert's centenary

Happy family: Bob and brother Bert, centre, with Rosemary and mother Gwen

Autumn. And a memorable date - my brother Bert’s birthday - it would have been his one hundredth.

A lot of memories, too of my big brother, five years older than I.

My earliest memories of Bert go back to the pre-war days when we lived at 6 St Anne’s Hill in Wandsworth, London. When I was five and Bert ten, we used to think up indoor games. My favourites were our versions of cricket and football, played on our lounge carpet using marbles, combs  and match boxes for wickets and goal posts. We could not persuade our sister Dorothy to join in.

We were always sports enthusiasts, especially cricket and soccer.  Bert would take me to the Oval to watch Surrey play and to Fulham and Chelsea football, sometimes with Dad. 

Bert always wanted to be there in plenty of time, but Dad and I liked to get there just before kick off.

Bert’s love of cricket lasted all his life, and he never missed Lord's test matches.

Bert and I were different characters. He was always quieter, more deliberate than I, especially when making important decisions. He admitted that his hesitancy, shared by Jean, his wife, did not always work. 

His plan to live in a bungalow in Penarth they fancied failed because they delayed the decision.They  settled for one in Cardiff.

Unlike Dorothy and me, Bert failed the eleven-plus exam but it did not prevent him from having a very successful career in the civil service, with a range of interesting positions from his demob after six years in the RAF. 

Like me, he found a fascinating job on retirement, travelling the world as overseas missions manager for the Cardiff Chamber of Commerce.

Jean’s early death was a terrible blow for Bert and Brenda that probably led to Alzheimer's that ruined the rest of his life.

How fortunate I have been to have had brother Bert, and sister Dorothy.