IN writing of OUR NHS – in the main, I have stuck to the truth and been optimistic for its vital re-building. This rounding up will be philosophical and necessarily general, writes Doctor David Halpin.

Most of us will agree that our country has been greatly lowered.  And that there is what I call societal disintegration.  A constant flow of news about stabbings, ‘county line’ drug distribution by teenagers pressed into such crime by evil adults etc, confirm the truth of this chaos in our society. 

Simply read the crown court reports in the MDA; older readers know that there is more crime, and this exemplified by the most terrible - that of sexual abuse of dear children.

Most days when lighting the log fire (now in a new and more efficient stove) or when we are eating a nutritious meal with a vegetable or two from our lovely garden here, we think of others and mostly in the north of our long island. 

I wrote of Elsie and her little Yorkie in this paper, and how an elderly lady with poor sight in one eye alone had her electricity cut off – twice – remotely by the French owned EDF! This being just one example of ‘corporatism’, a mindless and greedy thoughtlessness. Y

ou will be familiar with that drivel you get on the ’phone. ‘This is being recorded… ‘music’ - ‘you are fifth in line’ - now the automatic answer - ‘ press 1 for appointments, 2 for blood tests’ and do try and go on living!

Being a Dorset boy, though born in Lyndhurst in the New Forest on April 14, 1940, I know a great deal about the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Six men of brain and courage, reapers of the hay and corn, who got together as a miniature trade union in secret, to resist their wages being reduced from seven to six shillings whilst their children went hungry. 

For this ‘conspiracy’ they were crushed by the almighty power of state, church and ‘law’. Do read this history, because it is being repeated now up and down our disordered and dear country.

But I have solid hope within. I meet many good people and in response to my passionate words I see their eyes light up. 

I have taken to going into Newton Abbot each Saturday, in part to buy veg and fruit from the excellent Ashford’s stall in the Butter Market. (When we shopped there in the 70s and 80s there were four market garden stalls). 

Buying fish at Jacksons I spoke again with young Ben O’Neill. He had looked up my website (Google ‘david halpin dolphin’) and read it deeply. He had liked a particular piece too in the MDA. After our warm conversation he sent me an e-mail relating how in various ways this very active and caring man was helping to build self-esteem in youngsters.  

Later at the Paint Store the friendly man behind the counter whom I know, noted that there was no piece by me in that week’s MDA! So we meet in the mind and in hope of better times, holding on to common sense and, right down in the root, ‘loving our neighbour’.

You will know that in place of the art deco bus station which a chief ‘planning’ officer had tidied up by demolition to be replaced by an empty Sherborne House, I have urged that a third of the Butter Market be set aside for people waiting for buses whilst they have an affordable cup of tea. There would be electronic display boards showing when the bus was ready. 

That Saturday there were about 10elderly folk sitting in the canyon – cold but dry. I said about my plan and one man said ‘in France they do it differently!’ Yes I said, but we can still achieve the better in a British way.

There are so many good people who know the essence of life and our humanity. But many are modest and feel ‘powerless’. They are not. We can push our country back up the slope – together.

I have a very good friend, a most talented sculptress and draftswoman called May Ayres. She was incensed by the genocidal war ON Iraq, and by Blair in particular. Her sculpture of him in the stoneware she uses captures his essence, pictured, and others are of the victims of a long planned war based on lies snatched from thin air and having nothing to do with defence of Britain or other ‘western’ nations. 

There is one of her sculptures by our drive entitled ‘Passengers’. It exemplifies those fellows who are passengers in life, assuming that they have no part in our nation and society. 

We need a vast majority to know and act in the sure belief that it is OUR country and OUR NHS.

A year after my parents married in 1939 my father had a rough curettage, I assume, of nasal polyps to do with his asthma and allergic rhinitis. 

He developed meningitis and was near death. He was saved by M&B – a drug derived from the German dye industry. In the same Cottage Hospital, the Fenwick in Lyndhurst, my Mum was giving birth to me, the first of four.

Later that year Dad went into the family electrical and radio business, he being the lynchpin of the radio side having taught himself electronics from the trade magazine Wireless World. 

There had been two massive blitzes by the Luftwaffe of Southhampton that September. This included 40,000 incendiary bombs. 

The Spitfire factory by the Itchen was one target. This vital port town could be seen glowing from Cherbourg 40 miles away. The business was a crater and his precious Avometer dust. 

He gathered himself up, and serviced radios during the war from a little workshop by our gatehouse cottage at Appletree Court. 

We gather ourselves now for the fight back, and especially for OUR NHS.