Dr Rachel Clarke
@doctor_oxford
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Palliative care doctor 👩🏻⚕️ Author 📚 Rep: @AitkenAlexander 📝 Co-founder @hospiceukraine 🇺🇦 THE STORY OF A HEART out now 🫀
The NHS (VMO) 💙
Joined July 2015
Hello dear Twitter friends, I've made the plunge to the other place. It seems genuinely great. I love that it works so similarly to here. I love that there are no cesspit-inducing algorithms. I love the absence (so far) of hate. Please join me! I'm @doctoroxford.bsky.social 💙
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So society’s *real* key workers have just been revealed. Not the bankers. Not the traders. Not the elite hedge fund managers. It’s the nurses. The doctors. The delivery drivers. The carers. The porters. The teachers. The shelf stackers. The check out staff. #COVID19.
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Last night, cancer finally claimed my dearest Dad. One major surgery, countless chemotherapies, & a small army of community & palliative care nurses so he could be at home with us. The bill? . £zero. Grief, pain, emptiness - but not bankruptcy. Thank you, thank you #NHS.
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Please don’t clap us. Just wear a mask, wash your hands and respect lockdown 🙏
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When you’re sitting next to 95-year-old Sir David Attenborough and you *still* can’t be arsed to wear a mask. Or even stay awake. #COP26
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We didn't have parties to "boost morale".We didn't have quiz nights.We didn't have champagne.We watched our colleagues die though.We were STEEPED in death.We kept going.We had to.We kept on.So don't you DARE say your parties were "necessary" @borisjohnson.You make me sick.
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This morning please spare a thought for NHS staff who - at exactly the same time you did - found out last night from @BorisJohnson they’d be delivering 1 million boosters a day from… today.
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These Spanish policemen know exactly how to cheer up a city on lockdown. Just gorgeous ❤️❤️❤️.
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I’m finding it hard to stomach Dominic Raab defending @BorisJohnson & Downing St as a “cockpit for people working phenomenally hard under phenomenal strain.”. Oh really? Try 13 hour shifts in full PPE. Try iPad farewells. Try terror & grief & trauma & horror. You have NO idea.
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What an exceptionally beautiful thing this was. Thinking of the entire family at Balmoral 😔
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If Dominic Cummings isn't gone by the end of today, @BorisJohnson is insulting every grieving relative I have had to call to explain why they can't visit their dying loved one in hospital. Every distraught family member not at a funeral. Every frontline carer risking their life.
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In 14 years as a doctor I’ve never known such horrific conditions. Patients dying on trolleys with zero dignity. Or screaming & moaning in corridors. Dickensian overcrowding, total implosion. Despair. Weeping staff. Abject misery. Do you care at all @Jeremy_Hunt? @SteveBarclay?.
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I basically want to cry. You can’t imagine what we’re seeing inside hospitals today. The scale of the suffering. The horror of it all. No-one who saw it would EVER dismiss the dying for being too old or too unwell. Never. They’d do everything they could to help. This is so wrong.
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Dear @theresa_may,. 🇪🇺 I’m not tired. 🇪🇺 I want to vote in the EU elections. 🇪🇺 I want a second referendum. 🇪🇺I want you to stop putting self above country. 🇪🇺 And I never, ever want to hear you again pretending you side with me. You’ve stuffed us.
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"We truly did everything we could to minimise loss of life.". No, @BorisJohnson, you absolutely did not. You didn't lock down. You didn't close borders. You didn't protect care homes. You didn't deliver on test & trace. You just didn't have the guts to take the tough decisions.
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Anyone else in the NHS remember getting drunk at work until 4am during lockdown?. No, I didn’t think so.
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The extraordinary moment when the great humanitarian & trauma surgeon David Nott met the Queen, shortly after his return from Aleppo.
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Hard to feel very cheerful just now, but knowing that @BorisJohnson will be giving £350 million to the NHS this week certainly helps.
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Gary Lineker’s son, George, speaking in today’s Mirror 👇
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I don't want lower taxes. I want hospital beds. Trains that run on time. Kids who aren't too hungry to learn. Libraries in every town. Rivers that don't run with slurry. Local councils not forced into bankruptcy. Politicians who don't venally line their own pockets.
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Have I got this right?. The health secretary has Covid. The prime minister & chancellor are in isolation. Yesterday we had over 700 new hospital admissions for Covid. And over 50,000 new cases. We’re *already* having to cancel cancer ops. And. tomorrow is “Freedom Day”?? 😳.
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Today England has reported zero Covid deaths. For all the horror and heartbreak, what an exceptionally wonderful thing to be able tweet.
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Don’t get old. Don’t get sick. Don’t get disabled. Don’t get unemployed. Don’t get zero hours contracted. Don’t get poor. Don’t get unlucky. Don’t get depressed. Don’t get vulnerable. Don’t get abused. Don’t get ideas above your station. Britain, 2020.
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Brexit isn’t done. 180k Britons are dead. 40 hospitals aren’t built. Life expectancy is falling. Poverty is rife. Food bank use is exponential. The NHS is on its knees. Inequality is worse than ever. Teens are being sent to Rwanda. But yeah, sure. The big calls right.
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On 18 Dec - when Downing Street staff broke their own Covid rules by boozing it up at a Christmas party - 489 people died of Covid. Their loved ones distraught, cut off, unable to say goodbye to them. I think this is despicable.
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Today @MattHancock tried to claim lockdown was imposed on 16th March. That is a lie. We had to wait until the 23rd. Doctors like me were distraught, desperate. We knew the govt was sleepwalking into disaster. Trying to rewrite history after 45k deaths is truly outrageous.
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When you say you don’t know who to believe on Covid, you’re treating the testimony of frontline NHS doctors and nurses like me as no more believable than anonymous Twitter trolls. Can you imagine how that makes us feel?. We’re your NHS. Please trust us 💙.
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Down and out. The contempt he showed us finally repaid. Wonderful result.
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When a hospice patient is dying alone, no family, no friends, no-one out there who cares. And when a member of the housekeeping staff, on an outrageously small salary, chooses to spend their evening holding that dying patient’s hand. What kindness, what care, what NHS love 💛.
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Rest in peace, Dr Irfan Halim, who has died after nine weeks in intensive care with Covid. He was likely infected while working himself in ICU - giving his all to save others from Covid. He showed the ultimate courage, selflessness & sacrifice 💔.
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Imagine if @BorisJohnson had simply said: . “I’m not going to force you to wear masks on public transport & in shops, but I *do* recommend it. Because not everyone is vaccinated yet; cases are sky high; & I care about the vulnerable & immunosuppressed.”. Imagine.
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This is categorically untrue. Care homes were left without testing. Without contract tracing. Without PPE. Without support. You can deny it all you like, @MattHancock, but we were witnesses - we ARE witnesses - and believe me you will be held to account .
"Right from the start we've tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes. We set out our first advice in February. we've made sure care homes have the resources they need" says Health Secretary, Matt Hancock. Read the latest on #COVID19:
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Dear Mr Farage, as an NHS doctor who cares for terminally ill inpatients, let me tell you what’s disgraceful. 1/n.
This is the most extreme form of project fear yet, these people are an absolute disgrace.
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The issue is transmission, Kirstie. Children transmit to their teachers & each other at school, & from there into their homes. Parents, siblings & grandparents are then affected. The NHS is overwhelmed. This is much worse than April. Keeping schools open will cost untold lives.
Covid is a horrible disease but it is very, very, very rare for it to impact children. They are still at far more danger from journeys in cars, or swimming, or trampolining than Covid. Please do not let anyone persuade you otherwise.
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Basically, in the midst of an actual pandemic - with the death toll exceeding 55k already - the health secretary and prime minister have chosen to tear up vital public health messaging in order to save Dominic Cummings.
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"We will honour the selfless heroism of all those on the frontline who gave their lives to help others.". My colleagues didn't "give" their lives, @BorisJohnson. Their lives were taken - by you. Your failure to lockdown, to provide proper PPE, to close borders, to be competent.
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If it is, we all know you’d just try and deport it.
It’s coming home.
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We didn't have parties to "boost morale". We didn't have quiz nights. We didn't have champagne. We watched our colleagues die. We watched the bodies pile high in their thousands. These lying, cheating, self-serving charlatans need to be flung out of office. Use your vote. Vote.
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Can anyone from @bbcnews explain why this is the lead story online - and not the fact that a High Court judge just ruled that the health secretary @MattHancock broke the law in his awarding of multimillion pound PPE contracts?.
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“‘Are you feeling alright?” I asked her. ‘I feel all sleepy,’ she said. In an hour, she was unconscious. In 12 hours, she was dead.”. - Roald Dahl on the death of his daughter, Olivia, aged 7, from measles. The anti-vaxx movement is deadly.
Hundreds rally to preserve right not to vaccinate children amid measles outbreak
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NHS nurses hold the hands, tend the wounds, save the lives, wash the dead. They comfort us, console us, diagnose us, save us. They toil & smile & endlessly care. Not a single NHS nurse wants to strike tomorrow. They’re desperate. Please show NHS nurses some love. Please RT 💙
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Imagine not declaring your sister owns a company that’s mysteriously awarded lucrative government health contracts. Imagine not declaring buying a stake in your sister’s company to enrich yourself too. This is brazen sleaze, @MattHancock. It’s rotten.
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So Pret baristas will now be earning up to £14.10 an hour. New NHS doctors - after their 5-year medical degree, whopping £80,000 of student debt, & life & death responsibilities - get paid £14.13 an hour. And the government wonders why they're striking? .
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Deepest condolences to every one of those 36 families who lost a loved one yesterday. No ‘only’ about it. Each a wrenching loss 💙.
Yesterday, across the UK, only 36 deaths were recorded with coronavirus - the lowest since 21 March. We are winning the battle against this horrible disease.
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Basically, they laughed and partied while we died. I don’t know what else to say.
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Today a room full of men decided to force all women in Afghanistan to cover every part of their body, including face, with burqas in public. And that they should not leave home at *all* without a legitimate reason for doing so. Viciously misogynistic, heartbreaking news.
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Imagine having terminal cancer, arriving at A&E with suspected sepsis & being forced to lie on the FLOOR because the hospital hasn’t got a single bed. This happened to Madeleine Butcher this week. In Britain. In 2024. Because the Tories have destroyed our NHS. Simply barbaric.
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Knowing our health secretary is absolutely OK with 100,000 cases of Covid a day is truly terrifying.
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We can’t afford to stop patients dying miserable, avoidable deaths in corridors - but we CAN afford to cut the 45p highest rate of income tax??? This is obscene 😔.
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Still cannot believe a harried junior doctor can be convicted of manslaughter for making mistakes (Hadiza Bawa-Garba) yet a cabinet minister can be found guilty by the High Court of breaking procurement law (Matt Hancock) & not be sacked, resign nor even apologise.
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Under @BorisJohnson’s new rules anyone earning less than £25.6k is an unskilled worker. NHS starting salaries:. Nurse £24.2k.Paramedic 24.2k.Midwife £24.2k.Radiographer £24.2k.Care assistant £17.6k.Physiotherapist £24.2k.Occupational therapist £24.2k.
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Sunday in A&E. The heart-thumping fear that your child's injury is serious. The scans, cannulas, bloods, bleeping. The tender expertise of the doctors & nurses. The tidal wave of relief when it's broken bones, nothing more. And the bill?. £0. Thank you, thank you, NHS 💙🙏.
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Breaking/ @BorisJohnson just tried to ban certain national newspapers from a Number 10 briefing. This is truly sinister stuff. Hats off to the BBC, ITV, Mail, Telegraph & Times for walking out too in protest, rather than let him get away with it.
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This German Covid ad, now subtitled in English, is absolutely superb 👏
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This is the Covid Memorial wall in London. It took me a full 10 minutes to walk its length in 2022. Then, there were 197,635 Covid deaths. Now, there are >230k. Boris Johnson’s unforgivable legacy. Then, we had no power. Now, finally, we do. VOTE 👊
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I defy anyone to look at @marcdavenant's extraordinary photo of Richard Ratcliffe outside the Foreign Office today - day 18 of his hunger strike - and not be filled with rage & sadness. Where are you, @borisjohnson? How dare you fail to stop this? . @FreeNazanin #FreeNazanin
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Whatever you are doing please watch this blistering masterclass in political interviewing as @susannareid100 uses facts, poise & stone cold brilliance to pin down a squirming @MattHancock on his pandemic law breaking 🔥
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Hi Elon. NHS palliative care doctor here. I cannot begin to count the number of people I witnessed suffocating to death from Covid-19. How dare you trivialise their deaths, their families’ grief, & the trauma experienced by frontline staff?.
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Yes these are far right nationalist thugs literally storming the Cenotaph on Armistice Day. Suella Braverman whipped up this frenzy. I call on her to resign, immediately. Please RT if you do too.
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“I've given you the most important metric which is, never mind life expectancy, never mind cancer outcomes, look at wage growth." . I work in a hospice. And I’m reeling that a remark so callous, so cruel, could have been uttered by the prime minister.
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Boris Johnson may be ending plan B measures, including mandatory face masks, despite 100k new cases of Covid a day. But my advice as a doctor is to strongly recommend continuing to wear masks in indoor spaces outside home. To protect ourselves, our loved ones & each other 💙.
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When I vote I don't want unaffordable tax cuts. I want hospital beds. Libraries reopening. Trains that run on time. Kids who aren't too hungry to learn. Rivers that don't run with slurry. Local councils not bankrupted. Politicians who don't venally line their own pockets.
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The more I think about this, the more disgusted I am. He was in intensive care himself with Covid. And still - STILL - this degree of spectacular selfishness.
When you’re sitting next to 95-year-old Sir David Attenborough and you *still* can’t be arsed to wear a mask. Or even stay awake. #COP26
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I feel it’s important to reiterate - for the record - that while @10DowningStreet fell apart (as per Cummings), the NHS spent Feb & March 2020 transforming itself from top to bottom - a Herculean effort against horrific odds - to become an emergency pandemic service. (1/n).
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So because a bunch of unelected right wing zealots trashed the economy, we’re back to austerity & all its miseries? Please RT if you want a general election now.
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So you’re “bewildered & appalled” are you, @BorisJohnson?. Let me tell you what appals me. Your parties. Your quiz nights. Your brazen lies. Your champagne. You cavorted & boozed. While we watched patients in their 1000s - some of them our colleagues - die. You make me sick.
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Incredibly poignant cartoon by @mortenmorland in today’s Times. If you know someone who lives alone, perhaps bereaved, for whom today may hit especially hard, perhaps give them a ring later on 🖤
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Two weeks ago we had 59k new cases of Covid. Today we have 183k. And the prime minister is doing absolutely NOTHING about it.
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Naked cruelty from Conservative Chair Jake Berry today:. “People know that when their [fuel] bills arrive, they can either cut their consumption or get a higher salary, higher wages, go out there and get that new job. That’s the approach the govt is taking".
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A 4 year old with suspected pneumonia, lying on a pile of coats on a underfunded, understaffed A&E floor. Our NHS - in 2019 😔. And you know what. The Tories have had 9 years to fund us properly. If they really wanted to, they'd have done it by now.
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I cannot clap when 100k like Capt Tom have died - all loved, all cherished, all leaving their families heartbroken. Capt Tom was inspirational. But clapping doesn’t feel right to me amid the vastness of our death & grief. Nor will clapping protect others.
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A riot is not a protest. A racist is not an activist. A thug is not a patriot. Far right extremism is precisely that. Words matter. Why are some in the media refusing to use them accurately?.
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You’ve had 9 years to fix this.You’ve had 9 years to fix this.You’ve had 9 years to fix this.You’ve had 9 years to fix this.You’ve had 9 years to fix this.You’ve had 9 years to fix this.You’ve had 9 years to fix this.You’ve had 9 years to fix this.You’ve had 9 years to fix this.
I am determined to end the injustice of people having to sell their home to pay for care. So we will inject cash immediately & build a cross-party consensus that guarantees no one needing care will have to sell their home to pay for it.
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£37 billion for their friends at Serco Test and Trace. £3.50 a week for an NHS nurse. Their contempt for public servants is absolute.
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Remember when the govt counted 2 gloves in a pair as “two” separate items of PPE?. Well, to be vaccinated against Covid, you need a course of 2 vaccines. Yet the govt’s official vaccination figs count a single dose as “vaccinated”. Any chance the press could clarify urgently?.
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Intrigued by rumours that @BorisJohnson - boozing it up here during one of his many No 10 lockdown-breaking parties - may ditch his Uxbridge constituents on the chicken run back to his old safe constituency of Henley. Where I live. Should I stand as an independent against him?
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For nurses, the proposed 1% pay rise for NHS staff means a real-terms rise of just £3.50 per week. Please RT if you think that's disgusting.
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RT if you want to nominate & vote for @GaryLineker for 2023 BBC Sports Personality of the Year?.
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"We discovered too many care homes didn't really follow the procedures in the way they could have.". This attempt by @BorisJohnson to blame care homes for 20k residents' deaths is disgraceful. Staff wore *bin bags*. No PPE. No testing. Abject govt failure.
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Please retweet if you, like me, want to know what exactly @SteveBarclay is doing to address the horrific conditions in the NHS currently 🤷♀️.
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Truly terrible news. Nearly 700 more deaths today. 37k more cases. 19k patients in hospital. The prime minister’s dithering, weakness & vacillation this December have been utterly indefensible. I’m almost too angry to type.
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Another 1200 dead today. Not even close to the headlines. When did we become so inured to mass casualties, so blasé?. These are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. Loved & treasured human beings. Please don’t accept it. Please fight for better.
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Yesterday the UK, population 66 million, had more deaths from #COVID19 than the *entire* EU, population nearly 450 million. Not even @10DowningStreet can spin that fact away - it is utterly, irredeemably damning.
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I received verbal abuse on public transport last night for wearing a mask - something I choose to do: (1) to protect others, (2) to try & help public spaces feel less threatening to anyone clinically vulnerable. People are dying of Covid in my hospital. *How* have we got here?.
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I really couldn't care less how cheerfully or humbly Matt Hancock eats a camel's penis. Nurses in my hospital died of the Covid they caught there, thanks to inadequate PPE. He authorised sending residents back to care homes when we knew they had Covid. He's never apologised.
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How dare @MattHancock tell a perfectly courteous MP - who also happens to be an A&E doctor - to "watch her tone" in the Commons?. Perhaps he could watch his #everydaysexism?. Not to mention his track record on PPE - the lack of which has endangered countless frontline staff?.
I will respectfully challenge the Government - I want our country to succeed. However, I will not 'watch my tone' when dozens of NHS and care staff are dying unnecessarily. A clip of my Q to the Health Sec today.
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As an NHS palliative care doctor, it’s my #publicduty to inform the public that 9 years of brutal underfunding have run the NHS into the ground. We want to care for you brilliantly but we are at breaking point. The NHS won’t survive another 5 years of this. #GeneralElection2019.
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It appears as though the NHS student nurses who bravely stepped up, 6 months before graduating, to help staff the pandemic have now been hung out to dry. Surely their contracts haven’t been cancelled? Clarification needed ASAP please, @NHSEmployers @MattHancock @NHS_HealthEdEng
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Dido Harding, a Tory peer with no public health experience, who presided over the (privately outsourced) Test & Trace debacle, is to be installed as boss of the agency replacing Public Health England. This shows utter contempt for the NHS & public health.
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In 2010, when Labour left office, 2.6 million people were on NHS waiting lists. That figure has risen relentlessly ever since. When Covid struck, it was 4.4m. Now it’s 6.1m. So this isn’t a “Covid backlog”. It’s a Tory backlog. All that pain & suffering. A political choice.
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In the last 30 years, we've had 6 prime ministers:. John Major.Tony Blair.Gordon Brown.David Cameron.Theresa May .Boris Johnson. Say what you like about the first 5, but there is no way *any* of them would have weaponised a serial child abuser to smear a leader of the opposition.
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As Prime Minister, you can appoint almost anyone you like to be a Minister. And we’ve seen some truly outrageous appointments - mates, cronies, donors & relatives. It is such an abuse of power. To see @10DowningStreet today appointing experts in their field gives me such hope.
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No. Don’t you dare try to blame the public for the mayhem & chaos. Test & trace is abysmal. The lockdown rules are impenetrable. You let your advisers do what the hell they like. This is on you @BorisJohnson & your abysmal leadership. You.
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Here is how you imagine the 150k lives lost to Covid. It’s just taken me 10 mins to walk the half kilometre length of the national @CovidMemorialUK wall, directly opposite parliament. Each heart represents one of those 150k lost, those families changed forever. Please share 💔
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I called families to tell them their beloved was dying. I read out messages from absent family members. I saw the British public behave with such *staggering* decency as they obeyed the rules to protect the vulnerable. Is my anger 'overblown'? . She has absolutely no idea.
“I thought a lot of the stuff around Partygate… was overblown”. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says Boris Johnson was a “great PM”. Well, well, well .
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I understand the political benefits of declaring the pandemic over - but I want to hear from Whitty, Vallance or Van Tam urgently, in person, on television, explaining how on earth this is following the medicine/science. Isn’t the public owed that? 🤷♀️
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If, like, me, you're still reeling from that haunting 100k milestone, please know this:. In every single NHS hospital, there are the bravest, kindest, gentlest, most determined staff you could ever imagine - doing everying they can. For you 💙.
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There are 200k grieving families in Britain today who lost a loved one to Covid. Matt Hancock is the health secretary who presided over all those deaths. Yet this is how he sees fit to conduct himself now - for a £400,000 fee from ITV. It is so insensitive, disgusting & wrong.
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