I REFERRED to the closure of ticket offices last week, as part of the vicious madness to destroy all that is civilised, and which helps to make our lives joyful and without unnecessary burden, writes retired consultant, Doctor David Halpin.

An older lady who serves in our very good local shop www.ilsingtonvillageshop.co.uk was getting a young relative on to the train last Thursday. The machine by the barrier was out of order (as often with the usurious APCOA parking meters). The ticket office was shut, as ordered via the GWR gauleiters by central ‘government’.

Merriam -Webster -a. district leader in Nazi Germany who served as a provincial governor - b. subordinate political official resembling a Nazi gauleiter in function or in autocratic manner c. a person with an arrogant overbearing outlook or manner.

I mean of course this third definition.

And I say ‘government’ because it subsidises OUR railway and the present 35 separate train companies with our taxes. Last I heard it was paying out two and half times, with the vast inflation taken into account, which British Rail was given – up to its final privatisation in 1997.

One should always be wary of Wikipedia (some can afford a computer and connection) but here is the first paragraph after searching ‘British Rail privatisation’ - ‘The privatisation of British Rail was the process by which ownership and operation of the railways of Great Britain passed from government control into private hands. Begun in 1994, it had been completed by 1997. ‘The deregulation of the industry was initiated by EU Directive 91/440 in 1991, which aimed to create a more efficient rail network by creating greater competition.’

I spoke last week of those still weeping, and moaning, about our exit from the EEC > EU. They will note ‘initiated by EU Directive 91/440 in 1991’

The reader will forgive my quoting the personal. It often adds colour. This is about the hospital - ‘ an institution where the sick or injured are given medical or surgical care’ - usually used in British English without an article after a preposition”

The personal avoids hearsay which is often withered or distorted. The privatisation of OUR NHS is central in the minds of most citizens - especially now with 7.7 million - SEVEN POINT SEVEN MILLION waiting for treatment within an NHS hospital. Add those with symptoms of potential cancer, made more numerous by the unnecessary ‘lockdowns’ * and by potential adverse reactions to the ‘jabs’.

Not ‘conspiracy theory’, but reality accompanied by great distress and illness that is being diagnosed and possibly treated later than it should be.

So I speak in forthright manner of the many ways - downwards. And could add an experience in the Torbay A&E a month ago after Sue had a violent fall with her right eye orbit and her brain taking the brunt.

After an urgent consultation with an excellent GP at Ashburton five days after the fall, and with poor co-ordination of her left leg, she was referred there with an MRI scan in mind, a sub-dural haematoma being a real and dangerous possibility. Happily this was excluded by the MRI done five hours after we entered. Sue waited first for ‘triage’ by a nursing sister, but the well trained and very experienced GP had ‘triaged’ her already.

His courteous e-mail sent ahead to the A&E could not be found. That was another example of the ‘downwards’, added to by a waiting room crammed with often glum and worried persons – a coughing child included. ‘Social distancing’ was rightly out the window.

So here is the way forward, based just not on hope, often faint, but on common sense, determination, and that Mosaic urging - ‘love thy neighbour’.

I have just had coffee with the young lady gardener who comes to love and maintain this garden. https://dhalpin.infoaction.org.uk/ Click on the peacock butterfly for a nine-minute video to share the beauty - and learn how to avoid backache etc gardening!

This energetic and very sharp person is a graduate of Edinburgh University in the history of art. And the latter shows in her welcome work here.

She did not want to work indoors and for her life to be trammelled – on tracks. So she works in a plant shop in Totnes on a Monday, and comes here to Haytor for four hours each fortnight.

I love hearing, as again today at coffee time, of her partner. He works in George Earle ward at Torbay Hospital - Merriam- Webster - ‘an institution where the sick or injured are given medical or surgical care – usually used in British English without an article after a preposition’.

And he loves his work there with very sick, some young, but mostly elderly men. Some of these will be dying. Verity told me today how he loves to get a smile out of a patient who has no words nor little motion.

I took my dear sister Mary to the oncology department at Torbay two weeks ago. She has been through the mill, and more than once. She used to have the finest brain and was full of care for humanity at large. She was my right hand man for Palestine, Dr Kelly and OUR NHS - and much else.

But several pathological conditions have affected her previously wonderful brain. I have forgotten the ‘car parking’ but remember the kind shepherdess who took us though passages I could hardly recognise - all smart. And in ‘oncology’, which was quiet due to the radiographers striking, we were met with all kindness and an ‘old school’ specialist. The heart lifts.

There is all reason for hope, based on our return to common sense coupled with steely determination.

Footnote. ‘Lockdown’. A word first used in the USA for dealing with prison riots. This fits with Hancock, who in his numerous ‘whatsapps’ said he wanted to ‘scare the pants off the public’. Not indicted yet for this crime.