Hands up who saw Heidi Alexander’s response to Jeremy Hunt’s statement on junior doctors in the House of Commons? If you didn’t and you support the junior doctor’s, or fuck it, even if you don’t, it’s really worth watching and to make your life a lot easier than theirs, here’s the link:
https://www.facebook.com/labourhealthteam/?pnref=story
Brilliant. It reminds me of me telling off one of my daughters. They do something that really bloody pisses me off, but I know that the only way I have a hope in hell of getting through to them and even then it is really simply an exercise in: you are going to bloody well listen to what I’ve got to say, is by remaining calm. I’m talking at them. They are looking anywhere but at me. They are even looking at the garden, if there is a window nearby. They never look at the garden! I try to remain calm throughout the grilling. I am desperate to get my point across to them, but I don’t want to loose them – I don’t want this to be yet another exercise in door slamming. So I place layer upon layer, almost gently, but my line of thought is anything but a tea dance. My message is heartfelt and passionate and I have to get it through to them. I realise that I am sort of winning, because they haven’t moved. I very much doubt they can hear much beyond: bla, bla, bla, but I am on a roll and I am in control.
Does my approach change anything? Sometimes. Did Heidi’s? Time will tell. Of course she, just like I will never know whether it was our influence, our carefully chosen words that made a difference.
I’m sitting in a hospital room as we speak, so this is all the more poignant. I’ve (my mum) has paid £5000 for the privilege. I get an en suite. I can remember after having daughter 1 as a medical emergency, dragging myself down the corridor, bleeding and sore to a toilet where other new mothers had been evidently bleeding and sore. Leaving my newborn daughter in her crib, alone and shuffling back, as fast as my stitches would allow. I’m no political animal, but I am not so ignorant that I can’t see that we need change.
I can see that many politicians have not yet reached their teens. They are still petulant, ego-eccentric toddlers, who throw tantrums when they don’t get their own way. I used to ignore this kind of behaviour when the girls were young, but what is the parenting method that will make these people listen?
Meanwhile, I will sit in my private room, frustrated, but eternally grateful to my mum.