Wednesday Market, Bruges.

Me in Woensdagmarkt 9
perhaps ten years ago.

Bruges, Provinciaalhof

A dear friend recently sent me, via Google, an article in Dutch, from a series, Bruges Up Close, a blog claiming to take its readers on “a fascinating journey of discovery through the city” revealing familiar sights and hidden gems which help to bring the history of Brugge to life. And there, on page 1, is a photo of part of the building where I lived for over seven years, at the corner of Woensdagmarkt and Genthof near the Spiegelrei.  The picture has a street scene looking towards ‘my’ building, showing a portion of the roof and the tower above. Below the corner of the roof is a window which had been my study window ten years ago. Great pleasure as memories come flooding back of my happy Bruggean years, intended, no doubt, by the friend who sent me the article.

Slightly blurry photo of corner of 
Woensdagmarkt 9/Genthof 11.
Turret with copper ship 
weathervane above.

From the outside, the building is not beautiful, but it is impressive, and it is old, perhaps one of the oldest brick-built residential buildings in the city, dating back to the late Middle Ages. Undoubtedly, it was an upmarket, one might say, patrician, house owned and inhabited by wealthy citizens like merchants and bankers in earlier centuries. Later it served various purposes including as a lodging house and inn, and during the nineteenth century it was a popular base for the burgeoning tourist trade from Britain and Holland. Then it was known as the British and International Pension and attracted a flourishing trade. In 1869 the building, Woensdagmarkt 9 in ‘my’ part of the whole, and Genthof 11 round the corner of the same building, as it were, were totally restored by the famous Bruges’ architect, Louis Delacenserie who did so much to restore old Bruggean properties and designed several of the elegant railway stations flowering in the Age of The Train. His sure expertise accomplished, for instance, the design and construction of the internationally applauded Antwerp Station and Bruges’ Sint Pieters Station.

Antwerp Station in all its Delacenserian glory.

Delacenserie gave the house a neo-classical appearance, resulting in a greater simplicity of line and form, recalling the traditional. He added a handsome turret, crowning the spire with an elegant copper ship which still serves as a landmark in the area. The ship is not only a weathervane, but it is also a serious maritime symbol with layers of meaning. The ship refers generally to Bruges’ rich maritime past when the city was an important hub of international trade in the Middle Ages and a global port in the Hanseatic League. Specifically, locally, the ship was also a clear status signal, a subtle but significant indication to all, showing that the owner of the house belonged to the merchant elite and played a major role in world maritime affairs. Similar weathervanes, laden with meaning, can be found in other large port cities like Amsterdam, Danzig and Hamburg.               

Copper weathervane as illustration. Not the Genthof
Woensdagmarkt one featuring a warship; this is 
more of a schooner!

The type of ship fashioned for the spire on Woensdagmarkt 9 was a Manschip or warship. It had a high stern, at least three masts, all of which were square-rigged, i.e. having square-shaped sails, and could be described as having full rigging which implies that the manschip would be fully equipped for immediate sailing. Although Bruges lost its direct connection to the sea in the sixteenth century when extraordinary storms caused the silting up of the Zwin, the popular memory of that flourishing maritime era when Bruges was rich and famous, remains vibrant. Buildings like Genthof 11 with its turreted weathervane recall Bruges as a hub of the Hanseatic trade flowing from the sea through the city’s canals. The copper manschip is both a monument and silent testimony to the former Bruggean maritime glory.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Beginhof.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Friendship.

 

Connor, rather older than the grapes
moment.

 Recently, when my youngest grandson was visiting me, I suddenly remembered nearly 30 years before when I had arrived to stay with my son and his family. When I rang the front doorbell, this grandson was first to the door and by chance happened to be carrying a little bunch of grapes his mother had just given him. The instant the door was opened, he offered the grapes to me and said eagerly, “Hey Nana, do you want to play at sharing?” He was so eager to share that it seemed like an almost automatic response but his childish openness and instinctive generosity both touched me and prompted the thought then that this moment exemplified both friendship and family.

The three of us, probably
in 1954/5 with Peter the dog!
Perhaps, 20, 18,14.

This photo of Heather on her 80th 
taken on July 28th, the birthday I 
shared with both my sisters!

I have just seen online that July 30^th is the U.N. International Day of Friendship, and I instantly thought of the tiny Connor and his grapes and the charm of his instinctive offer. He is still my friend, as are his brothers. The person I had counted as my best friend over much of my life was my younger sister, Heather, who had seemingly always been my confidante and supporter as I was hers. We never lived near each other after our growing up but managed to see each other often over the years, in family-centric occasions like weddings, birthdays, funerals, christenings plus holidays. We had always supported and helped each other, and it was an incredible blow when she died a few months before I returned to live in England three years ago. I had lived in Bruges for several years where she had often stayed and then, just before I left to spend my old age in Suffolk where she and I had planned to do so much together, in the county where she had spent most of her life, a phone call broke the unwelcome news. I wrote Requiem For A Sister in a blog dated Sept 5th 2021.

Friendship is a powerful and essential part of the human experience and impacts all our lives in so many ways. I now discover I wrote a blog on The Joys of Friendship on Sept 18th 2019 referring to the same group of friends as described below! Some friendships last for years; I remember fondly [a touch of Proustian memory surfacing here!] several friends, now gone, who were in a group I belonged to throughout my twenties and into my thirties. I recently saw a photograph of them with me in the white raincoat I loved during my twenties which helped me to date the picture. They were the people I spent most of my leisure time with; dancing, meeting for coffee or lunch, attending films and giving parties, going to the pub and so on. I have never had such a long-lasting and intense friendship group since and I can now see the sense of belonging, and connection it provided.

Part of the Brugge friendship group celebrating
Noreen's birthday.

Reflecting on this, I note how positively that friendship group impacted my life; I grew up within it and learned, without knowing I was learning, about loyalty, kindness, trust, tenacity and sociability. Sobering now to realise that I am the last man standing at 91 when I have few close friends. Indeed, so many friends have gone, others have moved away, and contact has withered, while meeting compatible others in a new place, is much rarer in the higher altitudes! There IS a tiny category currently of 'almost friends', some of whom I know not even their names! Normally, I do a 30 ish minute walk early in the day, and over a week, I see dog walkers on their daily run with pooch and we greet and nod, and with one or two, we stop and chat. There are others when I recognise the dog but am slower to check the owner! But this loose collection of dog walkers are definitely Almost Friends!!

I love the idea of the United Nations General Assembly promoting The International Day of Friendship in 2011with the notion that friendship between peoples, countries, cultures and individuals can inspire peace efforts and build bridges between communities. This built on UNESCO’S Culture of Peace proposal, adopted by the U.N. in 1997 and below is the list of actions to promote a culture of peace, outlined by UNESCO then.

1. Foster a culture of peace through education. 

2. Promote sustainable economic and social development 

3. Promote respect for all human rights. 

4. Ensure equality between men and women.

5 Foster democratic paricipation. 

6. Advance understanding, tolerance and solidarity.

7.Support participatory communication and the free flow of information and knowledge.;

8. Promote international peace and security.

An impressive list and one which sets almost impossible standards but it IS iconic in its ability to engage the imagination and extend the horizon of any country or individual.

  

 

The Bayeux Tapestry: Another Thread

 

Just as I had published my blog on the Bayeux Tapestry, I happened to come across some more Bayeux information unknown to me previously. Honestly, this eleventh century ‘embroidered epic’ is a gift that goes on giving! Its long history contains so many plots and counter narratives to keep a person engaged for a long time!

I certainly had missed the news, released in March 2025, that a fragment of the Bayeux had been discovered in the Schleswig-Holstein archives. Of course, as one might surmise, it is there because of Nazi activity during WW2, when one arm of the German S.S. boasted a heritage research group named the Ahnenerbe which initiated the Sonderauftrag Bayeux [Special Operation Bayeux], under the ultimate authority of Heinrich Himmler. In fact, the Ahnenerbe’s sole purpose was to discover, develop and disseminate narratives in support of the mythology central to the Nazi regime, the supremacy of the Aryan race. Art in all its forms was of disproportionate interest to the Nazis because it permitted the manipulation of any material towards the goal of achieving the grand Nazi aim of global domination.

Heinrich Himmler who cast a covetous eye
on the Tapestry, to adorn his private castle
at Wewelsburg.

Not unexpectedly, these projects deliberately manipulated historical evidence to construct fabricated evidence to support the Nazi racist ideologies. Under the umbrella of the Ahnenerbe, numerous research projects were conducted with scholars travelling world-wide to find possibilities for the further mythologising of Aryan supremacy. Sonderauftrag Bayeux presented a perfect opportunity.

Although important in both British and French history as a grand record of a singularly significant period in their shared past, i.e. the Norman Conquest in 1066, the fact that German history was not involved in the undertaking did not deter the Nazis. Given the fame and extraordinary age of the Bayeux Tapestry, the Ahnenerbe saw in it a global opportunity to advance the Nazi political agenda. Sonderauftrag Bayreux decided to produce a multi-volume study of the tapestry that would assert its inherently Scandinavian character. The objective was to present the tapestry as proof of the supremacy of the early mediaeval Norman people whom the Ahnenerbe claimed as the ancestors of modern German Aryans and the descendants of the northern Europeans, the Vikings.

Herbert Jeschke (left) sketching the team recording the Bayeux Tapestry

Bayeux Cathedral

Fragment of the backing cloth
removed by Schlabow.
Recovered in March 2025 still in
the Schleswigh-Holstein archives

By June 1941, work had begun. Among the team sent to occupied Normandy to study the tapestry first-hand was Karl Schlabow, a textile expert and Head of the Germanic Costume Institute at Neumunster in Germany. He and his team from Sonderauftrag Bayeux spent a fortnight in Bayeux during which period, Schlabow removed a fragment of the tapestry’s backing fabric and took it back to Neumunster to study it. Herbert Jeschke, the artist commissioned to create a painted reproduction of the tapestry, also sketched himself with Schlabow and Herbert Jankhun, Director of the Project, entitled "Die Tapisserie!” which expressed their delight at their privileged viewing of this mediaeval masterpiece. To be inducted into the group, the Ahnenerbe, prospective members could not have Jewish friends and must express sympathy for communist views. Schlabow first had to join the *S.S. which meant he had to appear at least sympathetic to Nazism He held the lowly rank of  

Group of Nazi officers with Himmler next to Hitler. 1944

S.S.Unterscharfuhrer,

(sergeant) but, together with many other members, denied all knowledge of Ahnenerbe at the war’s end. En route to the Bayeux seizure, Himmler sent a coded signal to SS Chiefs in Paris in August 1944 ordering that the masterpiece be taken to Berlin before Paris was reduced to rubble in a huge onslaught planned by Hitler. Fortunately, Bletchley Park intercepted the signal from the Gestapo and ensured that the French Resistance rescued it in time.

The grand project managed only to produce an illustrated study, and to dispatch researchers to study the original textile, but this was considered sufficient to claim the Bayeux Tapestry as a monument to Aryan supremacy. WW2 ended in May 1945, too early for the entire Scandinavian influence to be outlined but in time to destroy claims to Germanic power. After the war, in 1946, Schlabow returned to research, working at the Schleswig-Holstein State Museum where the fragment he had cut out, re-appeared in March of this year, eighty years after it had been first removed. It continues to be on display in Schleswig-Holstein but will reappear at the re-furbished Musee de la Tapisserie de Bayeux in Normandy in time for that museum’s re-opening in 2027.

  *S.S. = Schutzstaffel. A paramilitary organisation founded for personal protection by Adolf Hitler on 4 April 1925 and disbanded on 8 May 1945. Became almost a virtual state within the Third Reich and operated with murderous impunity in Europe during WW2.

The Bayeux Tapestry

 

The Battle of Hastings 1066
English foot soldiers in defence, pictured in the 
Bayeux Tapestry c1070.

Sutton Hoo treasure:
the golden helmet

This week, during Macron’s State Visit to Britain, he and Keir Starmer signed a landmark loan agreement, in which the Bayeux Tapestry will travel to the British Museum next year for public display, in temporary exchange for the Anglo-Saxon treasures of the Sutton Hoo burial ship plus the Lewis Chess men. This was a great surprise given that prolonged loan exchange negotiations in 2018, again initiated by Macron, ended in failure when the historic embroidered cloth was deemed by Frederic Boura, a Normandy cultural official, to be “too tired, worn and fragile to be moved”, with transportation judged to be quite out of the question.          

Loic Jamin, deputy mayor of Bayeux, said recently, “In 2018 we just did not know enough about protecting the physical condition of the work, which is why the loan had to wait, even though we have always believed that it would be possible.” The Bayeux Museum said that it had carried out tests, including a dress rehearsal with a model, which persuaded its experts that the tapestry could be sent to the U.K. without excessive damage. A spokesman commented that all the expertise developed during the research over the intervening eight years by the Museum, and shared with the French Ministry of Culture, had made a major contribution to making the loan a reality.      
             

One is spoiled for choice among
the five examples of
male genitalia. Further equine
information below.

The Tapestry, [not a woven tapestry at all, but a hand-embroidered woollen narrative on linen wall hanging] is considered French though a most important part of our cultural heritage too over centuries, and known to practically every schoolchild, is 70 metres long (230 feet) and almost 50 centimetres in depth, (just under 20 inches) a not insignificant size for it needs space to incorporate representations of a plethora of historical figures and important events. It pictures William, Duke of Normandy, and his army trouncing Harold the Second, the Anglo-Saxon King, and his forces at the Battle of Hastings in 58 scenes illustrated in four different embroidery stitches and thread, in 10 naturally dyed colours. The numbers are thrillingly detailed! There are 623 figures, 994 animals, 37 buildings, and 41 ships and other vessels, plus, astonishingly to the slightly more delicate modern taste, 94 representations of human and horse male genitalia! These are generally of robust size, perhaps to underline the machismo of the Battle of Hastings and the feud between the two men.

Harold, taken by William to Bayeux, swears fealty on holy
relics, to his overlord. He is pictured between two altars,
while William observes from his throne. 
UBI HAROLD SACRAMENTUM FECIT
WILLELMO DUCI

The entire panel is now displayed, hanging on rails, behind glass in a climate-controlled atmosphere. To send it off on its journey to Britain will mean slightly extending the rails before placing the entire tapestry in a special container designed to fold, with no stress on the precious contents, as it journeys from Bayeux to the British Museum.          

The Bayeux Museum in Northern France is set to close for around two years at the end of August, hence the availability of the tapestry; the museum will close completely to enable a £38million renovation during which time the Tapestry must be moved anyway to a safe place. The long-mooted long-term loan to the UK means moving it a little further than first envisaged and seems the logical destination, given aborted earlier attempts to loan it to the U.K. Indeed, half of the tapestry narrative is showing Britain’s share in the Battle of Hastings and there is the recurrent opinion, based on the type of stitches used, that the women who created the embroidery, were probably nuns who lived in the Canterbury area.  A spokesman for the Museum said: “Bayeux has always had close links with the UK and we’re very happy that the tapestry we have taken care of for almost 10000 years is returning for a few months to where it was created at the end of the eleventh century. It’s a momentous occasion on both sides of the Channel but it’s perfectly reasonable for us to loan the tapestry to the British Museum because of our shared heritage and history. It wouldn’t happen with any other country.”  It goes without saying [almost!] that this iconic work of art has, in fact, never been to England in the almost 1000 years since it was created, [in England]

The detail on the tapestry is an archive in itself.
Here are the Norman boats, bearing
men and horses, crossing the Channel.

The magnificent tapestry was subjected to prolonged expert scrutiny in 2020, when conservators found it had almost 24,200 stains and 10,000 tiny holes. After the tapestry’s display in Britain next year, the Bayeux Museum intends to carry out a complete renovation at an estimated cost of £1.7m and it has also designed a structure like a folded screen that can be closed and packed while the tilted panels supporting the tapestry are designed to relieve any stress on the frail fabric. The Bayeux Tapestry will then be ready for exhibition when the Bayeux Museum re-opens in 2027 where the famous archive will continue to display both the intrinsic artistic merit and major historical importance of the Bayeux Tapestry.                                                                            

Bishop Odo, shown on the left of William
Norman sources depict him as a man of peace and justice.
Anglo-Saxon records paint him as rapacious and mutinous.

Intriguingly, the tapestry’s provenance is unknown. It is believed to have been commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, William the Conqueror’s half-brother, in the 1070s to decorate the newly built Notre Dame de Bayeux Cathedral, consecrated on 14 July 1077. The instigator would have to have been a powerful figure in the Church at the time to explain the subject, sheer size and cost of the enterprise. The tapestry was probably an extravagant gift to William from Odo, to commemorate his success at the Battle of Hastings as its entire narrative is told from the victorious Norman point of view.  Research has recently accepted that the whole creation was probably undertaken by the nuns of Barking Abbey which rather challenges the Canterbury myth as it is some 60 miles distant! However there seems no doubt about the fact that the Bayeux Tapestry was made in Britain and will temporarily return next year.                                                                     

88 of the penises shown on the Tapestry belong to horses.
The largest belongs to William's horse; the second in size,
to Harold and the third, to Odo. A device to underline
both the status of the owners and the inherent machismo perhaps. 

                    
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

A Semi-House-Trained Polecat. 1931-2025

 

 

Norman Tebbit in later years.

Norman Tebbit has died, aged 94, a famous name for my generation! He became a Tory grandee, despite the slight Essex accent which, in the early days, had caused the patrician Harold Macmillan to remark in appalled tones, that he had heard ‘one of ours’ talking on the radio in a cockney accent. In fact, he became one of Margaret Thatcher’s closest political allies, playing a key role in Tory politics for a generation. He took on the trade unions as Employment Secretary and, as Chairman of the Conservative Party, was instrumental in helping Thatcher secure her third victory. In his first job as a trainee journalist at The Financial Times at 16, he was forced to join a trade union against his will, thus first encountering the closed shop which he vowed, eventually, to break. Following National Service with the RAF, he joined BOAC as a long-haul pilot and navigator, and interestingly, considering his earlier antipathy to the closed shop, Tebbit became a highly effective negotiator for the pilot’s union, Balpa.

The Dynamic Duo in action.

 He entered Parliament as Conservative M.P. for Epping in 1970 and strongly backed Thatcher’s agenda of free market reforms and her strident crusade to limit the power of the unions which had brought down the government of Edward Heath. In turn, she encouraged his highly effective harassment of Government ministers from the backbenches and following the Tory general election victory in 1979, she made him junior trade minister, promoting him to Employment Secretary two years later. His Employment Act was effectively a legislative assault on the unions and fuelled the reaction which led to the inner-city riots of 1981 in Handsworth and Brixton after which, Tebbit rejected the accusation that violence was a natural response to rising unemployment.  He gave

his famous remark that, in the Thirties, when his father was unemployed, “he didn’t riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it.”   Thus, was born Tebbit’s nickname of ‘Onyerbike’ a most untypical Tory association and a gift to the cartoonists of the day. A highly popular satirical T.V. puppet show, Spitting Image, featured Nasty Norm as a leather-jacketed thug; always a bit of a bruiser, brutally beating up political opponents and fellow ministers alike. After Thatcher, he was the most widely recognised politician of his day, reviled and adored in equal measure 

The Grand Hotel, Brighton 1984
After the bomb.

Inevitably, he and Thatcher did not always see eye to eye and there were intermittent squalls in their relationship which probably both relished. Tebbit was often popularly referred to as the next Tory leader but shortly after the general election and the Tory win, in 1985 an IRA bomb tore through the Grand Hotel in Brighton full of the Tory faithful assembling for a party conference. The intended target, Margaret Thatcher, escaped unscathed but five died and thirty were injured; it took four hours to extricate Tebbit and his wife from the wreckage. He was shaken, virtually unhurt, but his wife, Margaret, was badly wounded, needing a wheelchair and, paralysed from the chest down involving round-the-clock care for the rest of her life. Norman himself had not lost his political appetite for confrontation, and he returned to the fray. He became the Tory Party Chairman and there followed many months of in-fighting, with Tebbit urging his boss to take more of a campaigning backseat as she was putting off the voters; a sentiment which greatly irritated Thatcher. In fact, suspicions were growing as the 1987 general election campaign approached, that Norman was more interested in his own

Victory wave.

leadership ambitions than the Tory Partyprospects. However, Tebbit's populist instincts paid off and the General Election confirmed the Tories in power with a three-figure majority with both Thatcher and Tebbit appearing at the window of Central Office to enjoy the acclaim of the crowd and implicitly, the Tory Party recognition of Tebbit's political effectiveness.

But this was, more or less, the moment that Tebbit chose to leave government to spend more time looking after his wife. He knew that this meant giving up any hope of the ‘top job’ and many years later, he acknowledged that this lost opportunity, self-chosen, was a source of regret. He stepped down from Parliament in 1992 and was made a life peer. His wife died in December 2020 aged 86. Although our politics were not compatible, I always admired dear Norman for his combative nature, his political energy and his cheerful tenacity. His decision to look after his paralysed wife after the Brighton bombing always seemed both commendable and astonishingly generous and kind. I think we might give the rare accolade to Lord Tebbit, that his was a life, well-lived.

The Tebbits at  home in Bury St Edmunds, in the 80s.

The title of this blog was born during a debate in the Commons on 2 March 1978, when Michael Foot, an old Labour foe, likened Tebbit to a ‘semi-house-trained polecat’ in response to a question from Tebbit asking if he, Foot, accepted that the legislation being proposed that made it compulsory for people to join a trade union, was an act of fascism.

Rescued after being trapped underneath rubble for 4 hours

Blackpool Better Start

  

Blackpool location

In reading about health inequality in Britain, I was dismayed to realise from the research, of the enduring historical patchwork of prosperity and deprivation in the country. It is not that I didn’t know that Mayfair, for instance, was privileged, and large areas of prosperous major cities like Liverpool, Manchester, Cambridge, and in London’s boroughs, also had areas of eye-wateringly awful poverty. Until now the sheer depth and volume of enduring poverty in certain areas had escaped my attention and I am now shocked to read the details. And what always particularly shocks is the proximity of deprivation to affluence.

Etching of Blackpool in 1848

To take one example: Blackpool in Lancashire, a town where my second husband was born, though he he always felt it necessary to add the extra detail,” In St Anne’s, at the better end.” Located on the North-West coast of England, Blackpool is a large seaside resort on the edge of the Irish Sea and in the past, has often been voted the favourite seaside town in the U.K. In my girlhood, Blackpool was the natural, popular destination for day trips, or even weekends away, particularly for factory workers from industrial Lancashire and Yorkshire, at a time, in th

St Anne's Pier

e 1940s and early 1950s, when annual holidays away for the working classes were relatively rare. The growth of the town, from an eighteenth century small coastal hamlet, to a fashionable sea-bathing centre after the Victorians discovered the health benefits of sea water, was facilitated by the early arrival of the railway in the 1840s, bringing the first influx of day trippers from surrounding counties. Today, Blackpool can boast of being the only British resort to have the three piers which underpin the famous Golden Mile and the hugely popular annual attraction of the Blackpool Illuminations. Added to these delights are the Winter Gardens, the Pleasure Beach, and Blackpool Tower still valued by many, in these decades of holidays abroad when most Brits only have to choose between the delights of South of France, Italy, Spain, etc.

Blackpool Central Station, 1960s
Suggests prosperity.

    

      

But Blackpool’s fortunes have declined since its days of prosperity and popularity. Frankly, it is not alone but seems typical of the decay in certain parts of the North of England. In 2021 Sajid Javid, then Health Secretary, made a speech in Blackpool in which he described the huge differences in health access and outcomes related to ethnicity and socio-economic status, as ‘the disease of disparity’. And last week Wes Streeting chose Blackpool as the location for his first speech on health inequalities, pledging more NHS funding for poor areas, like Blackpool, which have fewer GPs and longer waiting times for medical help. Blackpool Better Start is a national, lottery-funded initiative bringing together the NHS, NSPCC, othe local council, police and a six strong team of local trusted parents known as Community 

Blackpool's Community Connectors

Connectors, put together to win the confidence of locals. The Community Connectors are seen as crucial in gaining the trust of families in the most deprived areas who quickly feel judged and who also fear the power of Social Services. These Community Connectors enrol new parents attending anti-natal clinics and offer advice on alcohol and smoking during pregnancy. Birth registrations have been moved to three former Sure Start centres, now family hubs, to include every newborn name and family in the area. Every expectant parent in Blackpool is offered free perinatal classes, normally costing around £296 per course in other parts of the country. There are other courses 

£45,000,000 lottery funding awarded to
Blackpool Better Start 

aimed at developing the emotional bond between parents and their babies, an important dimension in Blackpool which has the country’s highest proportion of children in care, at nearly three times the national average. Since 2019, Blackpool Better Start has seen a 19% increase in breastfeeding, a 6% fall in the numbers of babies born pre-term and an 11% drop in the number of five-year-olds with tooth decay, an issue affecting one in three children of that age in Blackpool, compared with one in four nationally. 

Thousands of families in Blackpool now have the worst living standards on record and unhealthy, even dangerous, solutions to coping with poverty, are tried, such as re-heating old bottles of baby formula and turning off fridges overnight ‘to save money’. Across England, 40% of 11-year-olds are overweight but within that statistic, children in poorer areas are more than twice as likely to be obese at 5 and 11 than their wealthier counterparts. These statistics are depressing and speak of ignorance and a sad lack of awareness of the fundamentals of a healthy life with, perhaps, an absence of feelings of personal power.  However, there is evidence of much positive work involving both families and organisations happening in Blackpool and it must be assumed, elsewhere, to cope positively with inequality. One contribution might well lie within secondary state education with courses on health and social education compulsory for all levels of ability and with the teaching staff appropriately trained in all the nuances of deprivation and inequality.

In the interests of fairness, these houses on Dickson Road,
Blackpool, are most attractive. One bedroom flat,
first floor, on sale for £35,000.

Blackpool Better Start Partnership

 

 

National Health Inequality

Celebrating my 90th

As I approach my 91^st birthday, I have, surprisingly to myself, but perhaps inevitably to others, been thinking about the pros and cons; the ‘how’ and ‘why’, of living a long life. It doesn’t require a PhD in health economics to acknowledge no one would opt for a long and unhealthy life but, if one accepts the desirability of a long and healthy life, how might that be acquired?

This is not a question with which I have wrestled yet now, on reflection both in mirror and memory, I see, to a degree, that I have attained that. I take no regular medication, have had no major operations nor suffered from malfunctions of heart and lungs nor other appendages like legs, arms, feet, hands etc. The one major hiccough for me, important and unexpected, was the M.E. which stopped me in m
y tracks in my mid-fifties. Myalgic Encephalomyelitis came after I had worked over-long but happy hours every week during a quarter of a century, both professionally in education, and personally, with family and relationships. M.E. cut me down like a tall flower felled, taking energy and immediacy of action, removing my career and reducing my personal life to that of an elderly invalid. I experienced degrees of illness for around three years, but it took 20+ more years for M.E. to very gradually dissipate. During this long period, I certainly developed both physical and mental awareness of how to avoid the onset, and deal with the effects, of M.E. and I do wonder if the reflection and habits then perforce, developed, contributed to the subsequent long years of good health. Almost certainly. I never gave a thought, in my earlier years, to eating well, sleeping well, avoiding negative stress, exercising etc which I now consciously see as essential but also as normal. 

NHS emphasising Prevention 

The spur to my current introspection is twofold. First, the announcement this week that the Government, aka Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting, wants to turn the emphasis of the NHS from
treatment to prevention, an entirely admirable undertaking. Second, The Guardian, 30/06/2025, which yesterday featured details of an in-depth enquiry into National Health Inequality. The results were horrifying and depressing, starkly revealing that, despite the splendid N.H.S, founded on the principle of providing healthcare free at the point of need, still poverty and ignorance produce vast disparities in health outcomes. But individual poverty and ignorance are not the sole determinants, as the following list demonstrates:

1.      1. Poverty certainly. Relative poverty is one of the strongest predictors of poor health outcomes. Food insecurity, poor housing and probably limited access to healthcare are more likely to be experienced by the poor.

Sub-standard housing

.     2  2 Education. Lower educational attainment is linked to poorer health literacy, limited employment prospects and increased risk of unhealthy behaviours.

3.      3  Employment. Job insecurity, hazardous work and unemployment are associated with higher rates of mental and physical health problems.

4.     4  Housing and Environment. Substandard housing, domestic overcrowding, exposure to air pollution, all disproportionately affect the poorest. For instance, men living in affluent Kensington and Chelsea, may outlive those from parts of Glasgow or Blackpool by more than a decade. Through a series of pioneering schemes in North-West England, clinicians have discovered what one NHS manager described as ‘mediaeval’ levels of untreated illness. In several poorer areas, GPs and community nurses have virtually disappeared, A&E attendances have almost doubled since 2010 driving up ambulance call-outs by 61%.

A&E overcrowding is common.

5.     5  Access to Healthcare. Theoretically, open to all in need, there are nonetheless, cultural linguistic, informational and sometimes, geographical, barriers to accessing the N.H.S.

6.      6 Lifestyle Factors such as smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, poor diet are all more prevalent among disadvantaged groups and ruthlessly targeted product advertising exacerbates difficulties in access to healthier options. 

Choices!

I set out to write a few musings on living a long and healthy life but seem to have strayed into a consideration of health inequality in national British life. The Guardian spent months interviewing GPs, nurses, social workers, NHS leaders, and academics, plus residents living in some of the most deprived areas in Britain, to assemble its National Health Inequality project, The results are deeply disturbing. One learns, for instance, that Britain has the lowest life expectancy in western Europe and one of the highest numbers among rich countries for preventable deaths. My next blog just has to be on the areas of worst deprivation in England as I silently appreciate the luck of my own life journey from poor working-class family with work-shy, angry, self-centred father, to still functioning nonagenarian. In all fairness I must add that echoes of my father’s better attributes; intelligence, exceptional memory, courage to stand alone, willingness to respond if threatened, may well have descended in part to me. I hope his less attractive qualities have not filtered down too but it is not for me to judge!