There are two interconnected big taboos on which politicians owe it to the public to open up the debate, but which most seem to regard as the third rail. The first taboo is being honest about NHS funding. The second is deciding what the NHS covers. Demand for healthcare always has and always will outweigh supply. How many times have we heard politicians say that the NHS has, and always will be ‘free at the point of demand’, and will provide the ‘best’ healthcare? It’s not true. We are victims of our own success: research and innovation have yielded ever more treatments, techniques, and interventions leading to greater public demand, raised expectations and an increase in longevity, (the latter resulting in our being more susceptible to diseases of old age such as dementia and age-related macular degeneration). For many, glasses, medicines, dentistry, wheelchairs, certain specialised drugs are items that you either pay for or can contribute to. If someone wants the best focusing lens implant when they need their cataracts removed, they can’t have it. It’s not available on the NHS. Nor could they have the latest prosthetic robotic arm if they lost their own in a car accident. As a system of limited resources, it is both totally disingenuous and illogical to promise that the NHS will provide the best of everything.

The projected funding gap for the NHS by 2021/22 is of up to £54 Billion if funding is held flat in real terms, which in the face of the bigger economic picture, and healthcare to date having been ring-fenced, seems a realistic scenario. We cannot divorce the NHS from the national economic reality. We are still drowning in debt; only Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal and Cyprus currently have more private debt (excluding the banking system) than us, and combined UK private and public debt (again excluding the balance sheets of City banks) reached a record of 298% of GDP at the end of last year, higher than the Eurozone average of 268%. To put this in further perspective, at the end of the second world war in 1946, UK debt was 250% of GDP. Added to this, the number of people aged over 65 is estimated to increase by 51% between 2010 and 2030, and the number of people over 85 will double over the same period. We are living way beyond our means, and that includes our tax funding of health.

Part of what has driven this spending is the second taboo: not all conditions that we are able to treat should truly be classified as ‘illness’ or ‘disease’. More and more of us are being turned into patients when our ‘condition’ is just a variation of human normality. Researchers writing in the BMJ last year described us as being ‘over-dosed, over-treated and over-diagnosed’. On the one hand we have increased diagnosis, or what is known as ‘diagnostic drift’: screening programmes that detect early cancers that will never cause symptoms or death; tiny “abnormalities” picked up by sensitive diagnostic technologies that will never develop; the widening of criteria for being given a diagnosis and genetic testing that gives us a very dubious ‘risk’ rating, both of which can cause anxiety and possibly lifelong testing and treatments for no benefit.

On the other we have an ever increasing number of differences, what were once regarded normal human variation, now labelled as medical conditions. Witness the recent controversy around the American DSM-V bible of mental disorders which includes sadness, shyness, distress, and (as do previous editions) also admits ‘the difficulties inherent in drawing a precise distinction between normality and psychopathology’. Infertility, the sensitive subject covered in this morning’s radio programme, is a relatively common difference between adults. Yes we have medical treatment, and undoubtedly it is a clinical ‘want’, but a clinical ‘need’ on which we should be spending tax-payers money?  (And I have to mention here the 80,000 children in care and thousands of babies waiting for adoption; it’s not the case that you can never have a family). I am sure someone could make a good ‘anxiety’ case for having their teeth whitened on the NHS, but we don’t fund this, even though they could claim their discoloured teeth are ruining their confidence and life-chances.

There will be many different opinions, but the point I am making is that we need an honest public discussion: we can’t afford everything, so what do we guarantee will remain free at the point of delivery? There is an appetite and willingness to spend our own money on our bodies, as demonstrated by the £2.3bn Britons spent on cosmetic procedures in 2009 (it could be nearer £4bn now), and the £500m already spent privately on IVF, as well as other private procedures and consultations. I am not saying this will be easy, or painless, but we owe it to those with serious illness now and in the future the certainty that their needs will be met. And to those feeling that they are facing a postcode lottery for whatever reason, to have the uncertainty removed and know exactly what they can expect from the NHS, no matter where they live. It’s high time to tackle these taboos.

Dear Steve,

I am arranging BBC Radio Kent’s KCC election coverage 2013.

I would like to invite you to represent the English Democrats at a leaders debate on the BBC Radio Kent Breakfast Programme.

The event will be staged between 0800-0900 on Thursday 25th April, and I would be delighted if you can join us at our studios in Tunbridge Wells.

I’ve asked party leaders to provide me with a copy of the manifesto on email so that I can give our Breakfast Presenters John and Clare advanced briefing notes on each party.

Thanks again for your time,

Regards,

News Editor
BBC Kent

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The only quiet spot to take the call, while being in range for the hotel receptions cordless phone was…

Yep, I did the interview in the bathroom!

Anyway, you can listen to the interview here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01064rz/Sunday_Gardening_The_Pothole_Gardener./

CLICK THIS FOR LINK

or Cut and Paste this http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00zzds9/Julia_George_08_11_2012/

I’m performing at Express Excess tomorrow at the Enterprise in Camden! I’m really looking forward to it – I’ve heard only good things about Paul Lyalls‘ night, and the line-up is great. On the bill with me is Rosie Wilby, Indigo Williams, Steven Parry and Julian Fox. Come down to Chalk Farm for 8.30pm if you fancy a night of quality spoken word with a comedic twist!

- Dan

Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time
in a universe less inclined
to be as linear than ours
it was impossible to say
“once upon a time”
and mean anything by it.

This is what I put together! You can listen my reading on iPlayer (1 hour 32 minutes in!) or here on Soundcloud as a stand-alone.

- Dan

Birthday Prologue

William Shakespeare, we behold in dignity,
On Radio Kent, where we lay our scene,
From Tudor Times to modern scrutiny,
From Page to the stage, TV to big screen.

From forth the burning mind of this playwright
A host of epic stories were inspired;
Those misadventures, battles of wrong and right
Low farce, high tragedy, lost love desired.

The legacy of his genius-­‐mark’d verse,
And his continued presence in our own time,
A celebration of which, nought could reverse,
Is now the one minute reading of this rhyme;

For the gifts he’s given it’s worth it to say:
William Shakespeare, poet: a very Happy Birthday.

After that I was off to the Roebuck in Borough for Bang Said the Gun, one of my favourite nights in London. The Bang Boys were all on their usual top form – Peter Hayhoe knocked four poems out of the bar for a perfect start to the evening (standing in for Martin Galton, whose energetic bar-thumping was sadly missed!). Rob Auton treated us to bits from his upcoming Edinburgh show Yellow (everything he wore, all his props, and his poems, were yellow, of course) – looks like it’s going to be very funny, very strange and rather wonderful. Catherine Brogan is Bang’s resident poet for April, and she switched it up with some keenly observed political poetry; though her opener – a criticism of capitalism that took the form of an air safety routine – was as funny as it was pointed.

Fellow feature poet Niall O’Sullivan delivered a set made up entirely of terza rima form poems. It was my first time seeing Niall as a billed act away from hosting Poetry Unplugged or as a judge at Page Match – and it was masterful. A vast range of subjects and observations, a lot of wit and insight, the smooth links of an experienced compere – and all from memory too. Check out The Mundane Comedy project – Niall’s written a new poem a day since last September!

After the interval the previous week’s Golden Gun winner did his ten minute set. Chuquai Billy told us he used to do stand-up, and it shows – funny poems, funny man. My turn came, and I performed my set. With such a good atmosphere created by Dan Cockrill, Bang’s host, it was a thoroughly enjoyable set for a receptive and energised audience. Definitely the most fun I’ve had on stage for ages and I think I’ve finally nailed a really solid twenty-minute set.

My NaPoWriMo poem for yesterday was written on the train home (and posted after midnight! Woops!) and was a bit stream-of-conscious: the exact trap Niall said us NaPoWriMo-ers would fall into! Below is today’s offering. I was inspired by an article in this week’s New Statesman about the formation of and transport around our solar system. The author, Ian Stewart, describes the science in an accessible and elegant way – poetical, at times. Some of these lines are taken from that article, some are altered a little, and some are my very own.

- Dan

Slow Dance

I

The Ancient Greeks watched the moving lights
drifting against the static firmament
and called them planetes
or ‘wandering stars’.

As if they were rebellious personalities
too proud to sit still at the dinner table
or stay at home longer than they had to.

It is not surprising that they attributed their movements
to the caprices of supernatural beings
giving individual points names
becoming a focus for their strange and fearsome gods.

We know these ever-moving entities
as our neighbouring planets|
rough spheres of rock, metal and gas
and we go a-visiting.

II

In the beginning of our solar system
our satellites tell us
there was an intricate dance of the giants
part courtship, part battle
in which the massive bodies used the full force of gravity
throwing smaller chunks – some the size of Earth – at each other
in a riot of chaos.

Zeus – Jupiter, to us – father of the gods and men
lost to the upstarts
as all fathers must, eventually.

He became the middleman
in a collection of gravitationally determined pathways
the central conduit through the Interplanetary Superhighway
a celestial Grand Central Station of the solar system
impressive, certainly, but valuable for its function only.

Now he helps wanderers, like us, on their way
like a dad offering his car keys to his son.

After that I’m off to feature at one of my very favourite spoken word nights in London, Bang Said the Gun. It’s billed as “stand up poetry for people who don’t like poetry”, but as host Dan Cockrill says, if you like poetry, you’ll like it too. Niall O’Sullivan is on the bill too, plus the usual gunslingers of Rob Auton, Martin Galton and Peter Hayhoe. And with Raw Meat Stew, their golden gun open mic competition, and a guaranteed party atmosphere, it’s always a fantastic night! It’s at 8pm at The Roebuck, Borough. Come down!

Here’s my poem for NaPoWriMo today. I’m toying with the idea of doing a sequence of poems based on the symptoms I get when I get a migraine. Too self indulgent? Let me know!

- Dan

Vision

It’s impossible to focus on the floating grey zigzag:
darting from side to side
running up and down my arms and legs
playfully flickering on the surface of the monitor
before cutting people’s faces in half
and distorting the middle distance.

A pulsating tear in space-time
a wormhole leading to the future
a blemish in the air that no one can fix.

It stretches its alien tentacles languidly to each side
spreading with slow intent across my vision
until my eyes are drowning in a sea of mercury.

The peripherals disappear
vanish from my experience of the world
like a magic trick, or memories from childhood
innocence lost as I speed past the last outlet of hope
(denial)

rushing headfirst into tunnel vision
a maelstrom summoned by Lovecraft
staring into the whirlpool’s evil eye
spinning down, pulled by vortex force

the weird light at the end is not welcoming.

Eyes that cannot see their surroundings
cannot inform the brain about how to proceed
but not all of the traits we use to survive are impaired:

when threatened
find a dark corner you hope is safe
crawl into a ball
and sleep.

I had a blast at Kiss the Sky last night - Mel Jones and Alan Wolfson put on a fun filled night in a cosy space that’s perfect for poetry! High quality and diverse open mic, and I was really impressed with my fellow feature Mark Niel, who I was seeing a full set from for the first time. He’s really got the delivery of his hilarious (and sucker-punch poignant) poems down, and knows how to work an audience. Great to see a real pro in action!

More gigs coming up – Bang Said the Gun next Thursday with Niall O’Sullivan, and delighted to say that I’ll be at Paul Lyall‘s Express Excess on Wednesday 25 April. And then, of course, The Word House returns on Saturday 28 April. Look at this little line-up!

- Dan

The Schrödinger-Oetker Conflation

Dr. August Oetker developed Germany’s first storable and tasteless baking powder, and his company put the first frozen pizza on the German market.

Dr. Erwin Schrödinger was an Austrian physicist and theoretical biologist who was one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, most famous for his eponymous equation and feline thought experiment.

If Dr. Schrödinger had also been Dr. Oetker
(and in a quantum universe
this could very well be the case)
then we’re all in for a treat.

Because with Dr. Schrödinger’s products
you can have your cake
and eat it too.

Bonus material

the Schrödinger Equation
∆ x ∆ p ≥ ħ/2

where
∆ (a slice of pizza)
multiplied by
x (an unknown desire for pizza)
multiplied by
∆ (yet another a slice of pizza)
≥ is greater than
ħ (ħealth considerations)
/2 divided by two.

I’ve worried for a while that modern technology means poetry is perpetually stuck in the 19th century – try to imagine a truly moving poem featuring a microwave [...] if only someone would write that “Ode to the Defrost Setting (of My Heart)”

Ever one for a challenge, I had a go one evening and sent her the resulting poem. Here’s a rewritten and more-thought-about version (ie. over fifteen minutes this lunch break). As I said to Helen (who liked the poem, by the way – especially the bit about gravy!)  I can’t promise you that it’s “truly moving”, but I hope it’s at least entertaining.

Just a reminder, I’m on BBC Radio Kent tomorrow around 5.30pm talking with Mark from the LIVELIVE Project about #celebratedpoem, the crowdsourced poem I’m currently working on! Tune in if you can.

- Dan

Microwave

The microwave plate turned slowly
presenting her with one long face of the plastic tray
then the short
the opposite long side
a short
before returning back to the first.

A rattle as the glass bumps up against resistance
the roller underneath not fitted quite right.
The plate stops, shudders
and settles down again into the circular groove.

It used to be the full roast on a Sunday
traditional, and unlike her
but that was what he liked
and he prepared it all anyway
her job to lay the table
and, on occasion, to stir the gravy.
A spark of pride and a small smile:
it was never lumpy
unlike his mash.

Now it’s the frozen TV dinner
sold by supermarkets as a cheery-sounding meal-for-one
a full-colour photo of restaurant-quality food adorning the packaging
a black box of pasty potato inside.
Lacking in anything remotely approaching nutritional value
it doesn’t completely nourish; it fills a gap.

Controlled bursts of radiation
do the job of three hours in five minutes
(or four-and-a-half
depending on the category rating of your microwave).

Four minutes, in fact, for her:
he’d insisted on a Panasonic, Category E,
that if they were going to use a microwave
then he wanted a good one
one that cooked pizzas like they’d been in a stone oven
or defrosted a chicken as if it’d never been deep-frozen
arguing that they weren’t paying
it was a list
so why not ask for the best?

So she saved an extra thirty seconds
(or minute, depending on the category rating of the microwave
they would have otherwise received)
and used them to consider the whorls and bubbles
of the laminate floor.

Other brief news: me and Mark from the LIVELIVE Project are going to be interviewed on BBC Radio Kent on Thurday around half 5 about #celebratedpoem! If you’re in the area do tune in, or listen online here! Now, third poem in three days. Go!

- Dan

Right

He starts from his boozy slumber
points vaguely at something
three miles behind my left shoulder
announces:
“I’m not racist, but…”

but nothing else, for now
(but nothing good can ever come of this)
as his eyes melodramatically close again
like he’s only faking falling asleep.

He’s a man of generous, cliché proportions
fed from mashed-up tabloid headlines
fat from the never-ending feast of ignorance
the hair on his head cropped close
by the dull blade of everyday hate
or, more likely, his local Turkish barber.

The train stops and goes
and in fits and starts
he delivers lines like a bad actor
with a rotten script.

I feel sorry for him
for he is less than human
he’s a lazy stereotype:
if you wrote him as a character
you’d be accused of creating something two dimensional
because people, dramas tell us, aren’t monochrome.

Meanwhile, he goes on painting with words
splashing newspaper print black and white
(zebra stripes of recycled phrases)
over the walls of the train carriage
like shit graffiti.

He’d probably prefer if it that metaphor
didn’t include an animal from Africa
that I constructed it around a less foreign animal.

I imagine him saying:
“bloody zebras
coming over here
taking our metaphors away from proper
hard-working English animals
like badgers
or something.”

He doesn’t say this.

But he doesn’t know that the zebra I alluded to earlier
was born and bred in this country
has paid taxes to Her Majesty all his life
and speaks better English than him.

I lean back
tired on this last train home
and think that he’d have no problem stabbing me through the windpipe
would justify it by saying
it was my fault
for exposing my throat.

You need to click on the little picture of my face. A ‘play’ arrow comes up. Please let me know what you think below…

BBC Radio Kent iPlayer

http://www.ukhiphopgrime.com

I had the good luck to speak to Andy Garland and his team on BBC Radio Kent yesterday for their much loved ‘Sunday Gardening’ programme. If you fancy a listen, here is the link. I’m on around 48 minutes into the programme.

Viewing on a non-flash device? Click here.

TCM’s Ted Carfrae was thrilled to meet up with the legendary Bruce Johnston of the The Beach Boys last week.

L to R: Ted Carfrae, Michael Solomon, Janice Ian And Bruce Johnston At The BBC.

Bruce was in the UK for a quick promotional visit for the Doris Day album ‘My Heart’ released by Sony UK, and requested that Ted join him in his scheduled interviews at the BBC as Ted was the latest and final producer on the album.

Roger Day – BBC Kent.

The first interview was on the Roger Day Show on BBC Kent and can be heard on the BBC iPlayer. Click here for the link. The interview starts at 39 minutes.

Bruce also requested that Ted accompany him and participate in his second interview for BBC Radio 4 at Broadcasting House.

Be sure to check out this Friday’s blog, where Ted recounts his unexpected but emotional meeting with Bruce.

I have been getting increasingly frustrated with hearing assumptions and negative comments spoken about on the subject of radio.

It is not boring, it has not had its day and it certainly is not ‘undoubtedly better’ than television. The opinions that I hear on radio itself seem to come from that of little consideration about what the medium actually is.

It seems to be a somewhat stereotyped opinion from those who clearly lack any substantial knowledge about the media world that we are embedded in. What I cannot seem to understand is how so many seem oblivious to the fact that radio has the gift to affect an audience in such a way that no other media form can, especially when it comes the the genre of radio drama; which clearly is one of the most unappreciated literary forms of the last twenty five years.

CSR FM

Compared with that of television, one would assume that due to the obvious fact that radio lacks visual stimulus there is no way that it can be as ‘compelling’ and varied as what is broadcast on the television.With a never ending source of images that seek to shock, influence, entertain and teach constantly on our screens, to think that radio could do exactly the same is sure to be seen as plain stupidity by the majority.

My opinion however is quite the opposite. Radio offers a very different theatrical effect, an effect which I feel is one of the most interesting, as well as being one of the most influential. It most assuredly is not a blind medium.

Seeing with the eye… and seeing with the ear…

Thinking philosophically, what difference is there between seeing with the eye and seeing with the ear? Blind people can still see, they still have the ability to imagine what is going on around them, and create their own visual sense as it were. Other human senses allow them to interpret their surroundings. Sight is a minute part of the human experience.

Feeling and emotion are surely as important to true life fulfillment; without them what would we as human beings be?

This is where my theory comes in to play – radio (especially radio drama) has the ultimate ability to delve deeply into human feelings and emotions, so much more so than television or film. The entire imaginative spectacle can be influenced – there are no limitations; by which I am suggesting that taste, sound, smell and visual can all be created just from hearing even a simple sound.

What is so fantastic about radio is that because we are only using our ears to consume the source, each individuals interpretation will differ in a variety of ways.

The sound that we as an audience hear from our speakers is entering into the subliminal mind of the human being, creating an almost dream like experience, a visual show ground that goes on for eternity.

Therefore when considered further it would make sense to say that radio encourages us to have far more active involvement with the source being listened to deep within our ever so complicated minds, especially when comparing it to that of television, where an often passive trance appears to take over the viewer.

Experimenting on the airwaves

Sound experimenting

I do not want to bore you with lists of sounds that are used within radio and the ones that I particularly feel from experience have an incredible dramatic effect, especially again in the case of radio drama, but I do want to stress that the list really is never ending.

There is always the opportunity to experiment with sound to create a new emotional adventure.

All sounds that we hear have a hue, they have a spectrum of nature just as fine art does, therefore each individual encounters something that no other person will. How fantastic is that? We are allowed to let our minds run wild and create as insane or normal vision as we wish. We see no barrier as is experienced when watching a screen.

So there we have it, radio is extraordinarily far from being a blind medium. Instead of waking up in the morning and glueing your eyes to GMTV or BBC Breakfast, try switching to a radio station and think about what you have read in this blog – you may be surprised. Your imagination may even thank you for it.

1) M had a violin exam that morning. Who knows how it went! We were all a bit perplexed when she came back downstairs saying that the examiner had asked her to play D minor to the 5th. Apparently she paused, then said that she didn’t think she knew that one, she knew E minor to the 5th. Whereupon the examiner shuffled papers and asked her to play what she knew. Good for M for speaking up. But we wonder if he thought she was doing a different grade….Oh well. She played like a trooper anyway.

2) Also spent last Thursday arranging WORD ON THE STREET, a Canterbury City Council and Kent Libraries event connected to the Laureateship. In celebration of the National Year of Reading, and the launch of the 2008 Write Here programme, we are holding open mic (and open air!) readings and performances on the steps of the library (the Beaney!) on the High Street Saturday 29 March, 10-4. There are three reading slots, 10 am, 12 pm, and 1 pm, and so far — hey — a great and varied line-up, FREE OF CHARGE.
10 am: yours truly, Alis Hawkins — and three super students

12 pm: Stewart Ross, Poet-of-the-Year Vicky Wilson, Lyn White — and two super students

1 pm: six members of Save As, a thriving local writing group…(hey guys, where are you on the web?!)

AND — Danny Rhodes says he’ll be lurking. Perhaps in true performance manner, he will have a little baton of work in his back pocket. Pick a slot Danny!

Word on the Street is the first of several ‘well-public’ things the Council and the Laureate (er, me) have arranged in the hopes of encouraging literary activities, and especially of consolidating what already exists in the region. And I have to say that putting this together has been nothing but pleasure: the response has been so positive, so willing. I’m particularly grateful to Alis Hawkins and Stewart Ross — I’ve never met Alis and only spoken to her once online, and she just said ‘yeah, alright’ — and Stewart Ross — known him for years, lives up the road, a busy man…he just said ‘sure’ as well. Ian Hocking too was all up for it…but is on his way back from a far-flung place. Thanks anyway Ian! And with a 20% student take up — hey, it’s pretty good!
It’s beginning to feel like there may actually be a writing community hereabouts…

Also on the day: drama and word games by Whippersnapper Theatre Company; Great Beach reads survey; details of a Call for Work (I love this: come one, come all!) for an eventual anthology; and notification of the website www.write-here.net — currently holding…but I’m informed its life is imminent.

*

Phew. And just in case that isn’t enough Thursday for you, Word on the Street (arf arf) is that I’m supposed to be on BBC Radio Kent this afternoon at 2.30. Talking about it all. I think.