Latest / UK Column Radio / Nicola Lund- From School Teacher To Activist Journalist

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Nicola Lund- From School Teacher To Activist Journalist · UK Column Radio

0:06
Good afternoon and welcome to the UK Column viewers. I have a guest today.
0:12
I think this is going to be a very interesting interview. The lady
0:15
that's joining me is Nicola Lund and she's got some very interesting information. The
0:22
first bit is a personal story about what happened to her aunt in the medical
0:28
system. But Nichola has also been doing a lot of investigation into what we'll
0:34
call policies at this stage with the Welsh government. So Nichola, can I
0:39
welcome you into the UK Column studio. Thank you, Brian, it's lovely
0:43
to be here. Thank you very much. Now, I did have a
0:49
little chat with you before earlier this morning where we were talking about some of
0:53
the things that we may cover in this interview, and one of the things
0:59
I said to you is would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself,
1:03
because you've got an interesting history. I can see at one stage you
1:07
were a teacher and you've moved through to doing as well becoming a journalist or
1:12
doing some journalistic work, which is very interesting. You currently produced an article
1:19
for the UK Column back in was it? Except it was October last year
1:25
and we'll come onto that one in a minute. But let's kick off.
1:27
Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got from school teaching to
1:34
working as a what an investigative journalist. I grew up in Swansea and well
1:40
a Swansea and thether area, and I had a little bit of an unconventional
1:48
well not an unconventional childhood, but I had a happy childhood. But one
1:53
of the things I haven't really talked about before is the fact that I,
1:59
although I had a happy childhood, I did actually grow up with a little
2:01
bit with verbal and emotional abuse and from a step my stepfather actually from the
2:08
age of about three until I was about seventeen when my mother got divorced from
2:15
him. And I think it's relevant because it kind of I did go off
2:20
the rails a little bit in my late teens, and I didn't actually go
2:27
into full time education until I was twenty one. So then I did begin
2:31
a degree course in Welsh history and Welsh Studies. I completed a year of
2:37
that in Cardiff University, and then I discovered that I was expecting my daughter,
2:43
so I kind of fell into teaching out of necessity. Really, I
2:47
decided that I didn't really want to be putting my daughter into holiday clubs and
2:53
the like during the school holidays. So that's how I ended up teaching.
3:00
And I loved the work. I loved working with children, and I did
3:07
it for ten years. But I think obviously, if I'd had my time
3:10
over again, I probably would have gone down the journalism route, so that
3:15
you know, I've always been interested in writing, so yes, I was
3:23
fortunate. I got frustrated with the teaching because mainly the politics and the curriculum,
3:30
because whereas we were teaching to the National curriculum, which was broad enough
3:37
in itself being comprised of ten subjects, in Wales, we had an extra
3:40
subject because we had to teach Welsh language, and we all felt everybody I
3:46
worked with the curriculum was too broad and there was not enough enough depth,
3:52
and there was never enough time to consolidate the children's learning because with everything else
3:58
that goes on in schools ordinarily from assemblies, school concerts, you know,
4:05
visitors to visits to schools, there's never enough time to complete the schemes of
4:11
work that you get given anyway, and I felt that the curriculum was also
4:16
making it was geared towards making everybody academic and not all children are academic,
4:21
so that you know, that I found frustrating, and I was fortunate to
4:29
have an exit route, so to speak, because my father has a business.
4:33
I didn't grow up with my father. I was very young when my
4:38
mother and father divorced, but I've always been in contact with him, and
4:45
yeah, he got to a point where he said, well, come on
4:47
board, you know, come and help me with the business. And so
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that's what I did for ten years, and then after I got married,
5:00
I then had to move away from where the business is, from where it
5:04
was feasible to travel. So I at the same time as teaching and working
5:12
for my father, I also had my aunt in the background, who doesn't
5:15
have children, and she's been quite She's had a lot of mobility issues over
5:21
the years, she's been house bound and what have you. So I've also
5:24
been helping to look after her regularly over the years. So I then took
5:30
the decision a few years ago after we moved to West Wales to do some
5:35
to go back to some supply teaching. So I did go back for a
5:41
few years. But again that that that was a very frustrating period because I
5:49
soon realized again that there were there. There have been a lot of changes
5:54
over that ten year period that I was away from it all, including the
6:00
fact that I'd expected to go back and do get work as a supply through
6:08
directly through schools and get paid at my scale rate. But I found out
6:13
that in the intervening period, all of a sudden it was all done through
6:16
agencies and this story. I became involved in the activism side of it,
6:24
and we found out then that this was all down to Welsh government and basically
6:31
local authorities opting out of pension obligations eventually, so going back to supply teaching
6:39
with the extra issues, you know, getting paid at a lower rate,
6:44
terrible behavior having gone you know, got worse over the years, and various
6:55
other things. I then thought to myself, well I'm going to that's right.
6:59
I had an article published about the teaching agency thing on a website called
7:02
nation dot comery, so that then my interest in maybe doing a journalism course.
7:11
So I managed to do a diploma online and that's where my writing started.
7:17
I sort of hesitate to call myself a journalist because even though I've had
7:21
quite a few things published, it's not something that I have the time,
7:25
unfortunately, to devote to because I'm still looking after my aunt and she lives
7:30
ninety miles away from me, and I'm still helping my father and he lives
7:34
his business is another ninety or so miles away in a slightly different direction.
7:41
So I've got a lot to juggle at the moment. Thank you for giving
7:45
us that. It's always noisee when people will tell us tell the audience a
7:50
bit about themselves, because that sets the scene. And I'm smiling here slightly
7:56
because I'm thinking, yeah, you've got a little bit of the rebel in
8:01
you. However that came about, and it's interesting that so many people now
8:07
that seem to be doing something to challenge the system. When you go back
8:11
in their lives, yeah, there's just a little bit something where they've decided
8:16
they're not happy with what they're seeing and they start to do things. So
8:20
I'm going to put you in that category. And that's a very positive statement.
8:24
And the other thing I'm going to say is I think you should call
8:26
yourself a journalist because we're here as the UK column team. We work in
8:33
well, we work in media and journalism ourselves, but you've got the qualification.
8:39
I'm going to say we're all self taught, so I think you definitely
8:43
should call yourself a journalist. And you've written for The Conservative Woman, You've
8:48
done some articles for TCW, and I think also Sonya Polton's had you want
8:56
to show a while ago. Yes, I think I'm up to about six
9:00
Dean articles on TCW now. And I think that started with the Welsh government
9:07
and the criminalizing of smack parents who you know, smack their children. I
9:16
didn't, I'm not. I'm not an advocate of smacking, but I grew
9:20
up obviously having the odds smack when I was a child and it didn't leave
9:26
the scars that perhaps the verbal and emotional abuse did. So yeah, I
9:33
don't feel it's I feel like it's a sledge hammer to crack a net.
9:37
I think I would agree with that. Well, we're talking about writing.
9:43
Just tell us a little bit with this is a little bit of selling reselling
9:48
the article you did an article for the UK column called Wales a testing ground
9:52
for the well being economy and what what made you I think I might know,
9:58
but what made you head in the direction of that you were starting to
10:01
look at policy in the Welsh government. Presumably yes, yes to go back
10:07
to your thing about being a rebel, I think yes, I think possibly
10:11
growing up with this mistrust of authority then in my family that way, that
10:18
has probably led me to being rather cynical and critical of governments. And it
10:26
was basically the reaction to COVID that got me interested in all this Welsh government
10:31
policy because I I think I was taking the Spectator magazine at the time,
10:39
and initially when they said for the over seventies to be wary and to stay
10:46
at home, you know that I didn't think much of that sort of thing.
10:50
And then but when started talking about locking healthy people down, I remember
10:56
reading an article and the Spectator about the distinction between with COVID and from COVID.
11:03
I think it was written by a doctor. And yes, it just
11:07
made me think that there was something not quite right with the whole the lockdowns
11:13
and this, you know, the massive of death that we were going to
11:18
get ourselves into over this. So yeah, and I had an interesting experience
11:24
with my aunt. She she had told me I was visiting her every week,
11:30
but she told me to stay at home. She said, look,
11:31
I'm fine, I've got enough food. So I was in contact with her
11:37
every day over the phone, but I think she was watching television constantly every
11:43
day, getting herself anxious, probably not eating as well as she should have
11:48
been. And she contacted me, well, she connected me one day to
11:54
say that she'd stayed in bed, that she wasn't feeling great. And I
12:00
said to her, look, I'm coming up in a few days, you
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know, I said, I'm quite I'm allowed to travel and to come and
12:05
see you. And that same day that I got up to go to visit,
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I received a text at about six thirty in the morning saying I'm on
12:16
the floor, and she was. At the time, she was eighty eight.
12:22
So I called for an ambulance and I met a first responder at her
12:26
home and she was on the landing just sitting up. They put a mask
12:33
on her for you know, just just in case, but she didn't have
12:39
any symptoms. She was just a bit underpart. And the first responder actually
12:45
said to me that all her obs are fine, but he said she can't
12:48
support her weight on her walking frame because she was using a walking frame.
12:52
So he said, I'd like her to go in for you know, for
12:56
rehabilitation more than anything. So she was reluctant. We persuaded her. I
13:01
can remember saying to her, look, it's only going to be a few
13:03
days. They'll be kicking you out for the COVID patients. And she'd been
13:09
on her own. Just to add this is this is relevant, she'd been
13:13
on her own for about twelve or thirteen days. Prior to that, she
13:18
had had a cleaner going in this the cleaner had stopped coming and I verified
13:24
this on the text messages and everything. So off she went into the ambulance.
13:31
I wasn't allowed, obviously to go with her, and I can remember
13:35
on the way home receiving a phone call, This was a few hours later
13:39
from the consultant who said basically that you know, there were no issues with
13:46
her health. He just said her kidney functions below par and he said that
13:52
she's what the phrasey, the term he uses was she's swabed negative, but
13:58
he was going to run a test just to rule out the virus, and
14:03
that she'd agreed to a DNA. And I didn't really think anything more of
14:07
this because I wasn't really sure what a DNL was. That that was it,
14:15
and then that was that. So about twenty four hours later I rang
14:20
for an update, and then they told me that she'd tested positive and that
14:26
she'd been sent to the COVID ward. So she was in for about eight
14:33
weeks in total. That she wasn't she was only in. They admitted at
14:39
a Landock hospital which is in Panath, just outside Cardiff. She was in
14:46
that hospital for a few weeks. I had no time. Did I ever
14:50
get any calls saying that her situation with her deteriorated or anything like this.
14:54
She was then transferred to the dragon Heart Hospital, which was the only who
15:00
have been utilized in Wales, and she came out of there actually saying to
15:07
me that she she said, I saw hundreds of empty beds in there.
15:11
I think they're exaggerating it. But then she sort of flip flopped over the
15:16
weeks and months that because she would be watching television, she'd be watching Jeremy
15:22
Vine and Hillary Jones, and she you know, she's so she wasn't,
15:26
you know, sure what to make of the whole COVID thing. But I
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said to her about the DNR, and I said, did did you agree?
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I'd forgotten about it until she came out. I said, do you
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remember agreeing to having a DNR? And she was absolutely adamant that she hadn't,
15:45
and she's very although she was eighty eight at the time, she and
15:50
she's ninety one now and she's still just as sharp. She said, no,
15:54
I did not, so we can't. We got her medical notes,
15:58
we requested them, and I was also curious to know about whether there was
16:03
anything in there to do with the PCR test, because I heard about the
16:08
incidents of false positives, et cetera. But there wasn't. But what we
16:12
did find, to our surprise, was that it's you know, they didn't
16:18
seem to know whether it was covid or bacterial pneumonia. That was one thing.
16:23
And the clinical notes are quite interesting as well, because four days after
16:29
being admitted, I got it written here they've actually put down in the clinical
16:33
notes. Frustrated that she cannot work out where she will have caught COVID feels
16:38
well And in actual fact, I've asked here recently because I've gotten about it
16:47
over the last for a few years. But when there was the ITV documentary
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recently, not a documentary, the drama recently called Breathless, I actually asked
16:57
her. I said, look, ever asked you about this before? But
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when you were in the COVID war. You know, what was it like?
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And she said, well, I didn't know I was in a COVID
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war. I said, yes, they told me they'd put you in a
17:08
COVID board. And I said, was it full of people? You know?
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Were these people with it? Did you see people on intulators or did
17:18
you see people gasping or coughing? And she and she she actually laughed and
17:22
said no. We'd put the medical notes to one side after looking through them
17:26
initially. And it wasn't until a couple of months later that I'd heard about
17:33
the medazzlam uh issue, the fact that some people were believing that their loved
17:41
ones had been killed through co prescribing of medaz lam and morphine, So that
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I went back to look at her notes, just out of curiosity, and
17:52
there they were in the list in the PRN, the list the pro renata,
17:56
the list of anticipatory meds. And I called up a quaintance, a
18:06
friend of a friend, who was working as a theaternist during COVID, because
18:11
I wanted to know exactly what this PRN meant and the amounts and the dates
18:18
and things like that. And then so she told me that if there are
18:21
dates at the side of it. That means that the drugs have been administered.
18:25
So we learned then that she obviously hadn't been given a dazzlam, thank
18:30
goodness, but she'd been given morphine. And she said, well, I'm
18:34
an urgic to morphine. I shouldn't have had it. So we took it
18:38
up with the health board and we began asking questions, and as it happened,
18:45
it took a long time really to get any answers. First of all,
18:48
I wasn't getting any response, so I was resending emails, and eventually
18:53
they said that, oh no, we didn't know that your aunt was allergic
19:00
to morphine, and I had to refer them back to the triage notes where
19:07
it actually states allergies morphine. So obviously she hadn't had an adverse reaction at
19:15
the time. But they did then say, well, you know, we're
19:18
going to offer a payment of two hundred and fifty pounds, which you know,
19:22
that's not why we were asking questions, but obviously they gave her this
19:26
payment, and I kept on to them asking again, well, can you
19:30
can you explain more why she had these this list of medications in her notes?
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And I was getting I was they were talking about other medications, they
19:40
were never referring to medazlam. So I got the ombardsman involved in the end,
19:45
and the ombardsman said that yes, they agreed that they weren't being straight
19:49
with us and that they would need to give us a more definitive response,
19:56
and eventually they did actually say that it was there so that it would have
20:02
been to make her comfortable should her condition have deteriorated. But to go back
20:07
to the lady I spoke to over the phone the theaters, I also want
20:12
to mention as well. I've got it written down here so I don't want
20:17
to get it misquote. But she actually said to me she worked in Ico
20:22
and in theaters during twenty twenty, and she said recommendations were given that would
20:27
probably shock the majority of the population. And she said, and I said
20:33
to her, well, you know, are you aware that the MHRA guidance
20:37
is that benzo diazepines and opioids are not meant to be co prescribed, especially
20:44
for people who are over sixty. And she said that the reality is far
20:48
from the guidance. And she told me that rules were flexed during COVID and
20:56
that decisions were made on the basis of life years and it's consultants made decisions
21:03
regarding DNR's and dignified deaths, and she was fully aware of the blanket dnars
21:07
given in nursing home settings. Just to bring them on screen, if you're
21:11
happy, because you did provide just two excerpts from the medical documents, this
21:17
one here on screen, which is talking about worsening inflammatory markers and it's question
21:26
mark progression of COVID and question mark consolidation consistent with bacterial pneumonia. So one
21:36
stage those documents seemed to think, seemed to indicate that they were suspicious of
21:42
her health. Do you want to add something more to that? They did
21:49
say that she had a bit of a cough when she'd been admitted, when
21:55
she was in the assessment center, so I don't know whether she had picked
22:00
anything up or what, but you know, she's definitely when she was when
22:07
she left me, the first responder had said all her obs are fine.
22:14
But I noticed on this this form it also talks about Dazzle LAMB as well,
22:21
So just for clarity, she did get both at some stage, Is
22:25
that right? No, she wasn't if she'd been given me dazzle And there
22:29
would have been a date side, you know, of where it's written on
22:32
the form. She was she was just given morphine on the form you talked
22:37
about the date, and it's got eleventh or the fourth Medazza lamb, so
22:42
it has got a date to the left of it. Yeah, the date
22:45
on the left is the date that they put it in the list of anticipatory
22:49
meds. The date that I meant to I was referring to as the date
22:55
on the right hand side, and that shows when it was administered. And
22:59
the thin thing about the eleventh of April. They put this what I believe
23:06
to be an end of life pathway in her notes on the eleventh of April,
23:11
and they obviously told me at a later date that it was there just
23:14
in case, you know, her conditioner deteriorated and she wouldn't have made a
23:18
recovery. But if you look at the when I looked at the clinical notes
23:21
for that same day, it actually said patient is sitting up in bed and
23:26
doesn't necessarily feel any worse. So she wasn't even poorly that on that particular
23:33
day that these meds were put in there into her just in case list of
23:37
meds. You pressed a complaint through You obviously spoke to the hospital, but
23:41
you end up with the onwardsman. And what was the specific complaint that she
23:47
had been administered morphine when she shouldn't have been. Yes, and we also
23:53
wanted answers as to why madazolam was there contrary to mhr E guid guidelines.
24:00
That was the main threast of the of the complaint. So how did the
24:03
hospital respond to that? It was the health Board rather than the hospital that
24:11
responded, and they, like I said, there was a bit of obfiscation
24:15
and that they were They kept going on about some of the other medications that
24:18
she was on at first, and I had to keep going back to them
24:22
and saying, no, I'm not asking about those, I'm asking about these
24:25
specific ones that bends of dazepine and the opioids. And that was when obviously
24:30
I got the the ombardsmen to intervene, right okay, and was getting straight
24:36
answers. Okay, what what was the outcome from the onwardsman? Then the
24:40
ombardsman gave the health Board about a month I think it was, to respond
24:45
and they and they eventually did and they what they had said was that they
24:48
admitted really in a roundabout way that they were end of life medications that would
24:53
have assured her comfort if she were, you know, wasn't going to survive
25:00
from COVID. Right, the whole thing. I'm going to use the word
25:04
scary because I do find it scary because it's so gray. You've just quoted
25:11
the health official that sort of said to you that rules were bent during that
25:15
period, and then at the same time, I do not resuscitate appears out
25:19
of nowhere. And also potentially they were administering combinations of medication which are known
25:29
to be lethal. It's as though common sense has gone out of the NHS
25:34
system. Yes, and it left her with a big fear of well,
25:41
that's right. I wrote about the DNR as well. That was one of
25:42
the things I wrote about on TCW because that was another thing she said,
25:48
well, I'm not having I didn't agree to that, and I'm not having
25:52
that, you know, And we asked them if they could remove that from
25:56
her medical records. But it turns out that it's a league because it's your
26:00
medical records. It seemed to be legal documents that you can't actually have a
26:04
DNR removed, but you can ask for it to be reviewed on future admission
26:11
to hospital. And the funny thing is she did go in again then last
26:15
year again that was a mobility issue. She had become bedridden, and so
26:25
she went in on It was June last year and once again she'd gone in
26:33
with no symptoms and she was labeled as a COVID patient. Again she tested
26:37
positive, and of course we had the conversation about the DNR. That was
26:45
one of the first things that because I'm her next of kin, that was
26:48
the first thing that the doctor wanted to talk to me about. And I
26:52
said, look, you know this isn't right. You know, we don't
26:57
want her to have this DNR. But he basically said that it's very,
27:03
very difficult to get a to go from having a DNR in place to know
27:07
DNR. And I didn't want to labor the point at the time because we
27:14
were having the conversation in front of my aunt and I didn't want to upset
27:17
her any more than she already was upset about just being in hospital. I've
27:22
learned something straight away there, because I've never heard before that dnrs are difficult
27:27
impossible to get removed. So she doesn't agree to it in the first place.
27:33
I suspect she doesn't know anything about that DNR or medical records. And
27:40
then when you say this is there without the patient approving it, they say,
27:45
oh, well yes, and by the way, it's nearly impossible to
27:49
get it off your records. This is incredible if I follow it through in
27:55
a logical way, it is. And I think that the fact that people
28:00
both families weren't allowed in the hospital during twenty twenty didn't help because I think,
28:06
I think the situation is that you normally do involve the patient and the
28:11
family in such a decision. But you know, dare I say it?
28:19
I think they've probably you know, bent the truth a little bit there and
28:23
saying that she agreed to it, and of course if there's nobody there to
28:26
witness that, then it's her word against theirs. I did, in fact,
28:32
ask if they record these conversations, because I knew what i'd heard over
28:36
the phone. You know, I said, you do record these conversations,
28:41
and they don't. And then at some time after that, you also challenged
28:47
over the sorry you challenged public Health way also over there warnings to do with
28:56
vaccines, and you actually won or you've got to perri victory on that.
29:02
Yeah, that was just a small challenge. Really, I'd seen I was
29:07
looking at their website. We had lost a family friend basically who had been
29:12
vaccinated and he was only sixty two and he'd gone into hospital and he died.
29:22
He was put on a ventilator and he was labeled a COVID death.
29:26
And when I saw that the Public Health was saying on their website I think
29:32
this was sometime in twenty twenty one, that the vaccine will prevent hospital and
29:38
hospitalization and death. I obviously wrote to them and challenged them and I said,
29:45
well, this isn't what happened in our friend's case. And to my
29:48
surprise, they did actually reply, and they did say we take on board
29:52
your comments and we will revisit our wording. And I think then they changed
29:56
it. The response was changed. They say to the freak frequently answered question
30:02
now reads like all medicines, no vaccine as one hundred percent effective. Some
30:07
people may still get COVID nineteen despite having a vaccination, but this should be
30:14
less severe. So your challenging produced a change in what they had to say.
30:21
Yes, So that was a small victory. And I also challenged Welsh
30:25
Blood regarding the mask policy as well for blood donors. This was, Yeah,
30:37
I've been following Peter Hitchins and his because i've been I was a blood
30:41
done of the years I noticed that Peter Hitchins had started. He traveled into
30:47
Wales on a number of occasions because the mask mandates were brought into England sooner
30:52
than they were brought into Wales. And when they eventually came in in September
31:00
of twenty twenty in Wales, I'd gone to make an appointment to donate blood,
31:07
but I was told that I'd have to wear a mask, and I'd
31:11
already contacted MYGP because I do have a genuine fear for semming from childhood trauma
31:19
of anything covering my face, and so he'd said, well, I can't
31:25
exempt you, but I can write you a letter of support. So I'd
31:30
gone back to Welsh Blood and I've said, look, well I've got a
31:33
letter from my GP, and they I said, I think you'll find that
31:38
you you know, you can't exempt. You can't stop me from coming to
31:42
give blood without wearing a mask, because this is a contravention of the equality
31:48
at twenty ten and it took about eight weeks. They wrote back to me
31:55
and they said, look, sorry, we need more time. And they
31:57
eventually they got back to me, I think it was early December, and
32:01
they said they apologized, and they said, yes, they had to seek
32:07
external legal advice and they admitted then that they would have to realign their service
32:15
with the requirements of the Equality Act. Although I didn't actually get around to
32:22
donating blood that on that particular time because they then a couple of days before
32:30
Christmas twenty twenty. They then wrote back to say, sorry, we've had
32:35
to reverse our decision temporarily because of new variants. But it was, you
32:42
know, a small another small victory, and it was something that got me
32:45
into contact with Peter Hitchins at the time because I felt he would be interested
32:49
in this and something else I wrote about for TCW, and of course Peter
32:55
Hitchins had shared it, and you know, that was quite quite a compliment.
33:00
Really, No, it's very good and just a little question. But
33:06
as you're doing all this, you're challenging the hospital, you're challenging the local
33:10
health authority. Were you doing all this on your own or did you have
33:15
friends or family who were supporting you. No, I was really doing it
33:21
all on my own. You know, my husband's obviously been supportive through this
33:25
all, but no, this was, yeah, a single handed thing.
33:30
Yeah, and that's that's pretty difficult. I know from a family incident myself.
33:37
When you come to challenge the NHS, it's hard work and it can
33:42
be quite challenging. I think that's the word that's us these days. But
33:46
yeah, so you did it on your own, Well well done, Nicholer,
33:50
because you diet, you did get a result out of it. And
33:52
probably the best part of the story is your aunt came out, and so
33:58
many other people didn't come up out of the system after those sorts of things
34:01
happened to them. Yes, and one thing I don't know if I mentioned,
34:07
but that there were only about forty six people ever in that Dragon Heart
34:12
hospital that my aunt was in, and when she came out, they were
34:17
virtually closing it down. And I think this was about early June time in
34:22
twenty twenty. But she told me that another lady that had come out the
34:25
same time as her was ninety nine. So there was an eighty eight year
34:30
old and a ninety nine year old at the time coming out of there.
34:32
And yet this wasn't even mentioned in the news. You know, all they
34:36
were doing was giving us the daily death counts and the doom and gloom.
34:39
They weren't telling us that people of that age were even surviving it. So
34:45
two lucky ladies in that case then, which is good? Okay? Well,
34:50
that leads us on to the fact that obviously you're still at work challenging
34:54
the system about what it's doing. And you sent me some very interesting material
34:59
to do with policy in Wales, and most of this stems to I think
35:07
we'll call it a gender twenty thirty, but there's a number of different parts
35:12
for it. Now I've taken some of the documents that you provided. This
35:17
one, of course, very striking with the red dragon is the rising to
35:22
the triple challenge of Brexit, COVID nineteen and climate change for health, well
35:28
being and equality in Wales. Now I had to smile when I saw the
35:31
well being because that ties in with your article that you've written for the column
35:37
a while ago. But you'd particularly flagged up the twenty minute neighborhoods and comments
35:43
to do with transport and what they called active travel. And I'll just bring
35:47
the next one up on screen and then i'll let you comment this was one
35:52
of the pages of the route map, A Strategic Framework for Change. We'll
35:59
see the earth that you highlighted. This comments staff and citizens demand zero tolerance
36:06
of unsustainable behavior as it's socially unacceptable. Now that staff might relate to NHS
36:14
or teaching. This is I think aimed at all public sector staff really.
36:21
So what I need to mention as well at this point is the publication that
36:27
you just put up regarding the Triple Challenge. That's actually a publication from a
36:34
collaboration between Public Health Whales and the World Health Organization back in twenty eighteen.
36:42
I discovered that, well, I didn't descree it back in twenty eighteen.
36:45
I discovered in twenty twenty when I started researching that the Public Health Whales was
36:52
the only health service in the UK which had a collaboration with the World Health
36:57
Organization. And it's called the International Health Care Ordination Center, and it's the
37:01
first of its kind in the world. Apparently there are other, you know,
37:06
similar little collaborations going on. That's actually quite a statement, though,
37:12
isn't it that sort of just call it up here, zero tolerance of unsustainable
37:16
behavior as it is socially unacceptable. This is this is a very controlling statement,
37:24
and that obviously jumped off the page to you because you put your big,
37:30
big red pen around it. Yes, indeed, And an interesting thing
37:36
as well is that the IHCC have got this established a behavioral science unit in
37:45
May of twenty twenty two, and that and again, that's all to do
37:50
with getting people to think in the right way basically about about the climate and
37:59
about the Team Whales approach that we're supposed to be going to be encouraged to
38:07
take. You know, they've said that they want everybody to embed the climate
38:13
in the way that we work, travel and play. You know, it's
38:17
going to be all encompassing. We were also the first country in the world
38:23
to declare a climate emergency as well, right in twenty nineteen. I think
38:30
this is the hive mind is where it's taking to papers. It's saying through
38:36
the applied behavioral psychology that we all have to think the same way, we
38:42
have to be on board the same policies. That's how I take these documents
38:47
definitely. Yes. Another comment that you picked up in one of them was
38:52
the twenty minute neighborhood. So we're seeing very strongly that if we're talking about
38:58
anything to do with sport policies. What's actually there at the background is twenty
39:04
minute neighborhoods or fifteen minute cities. That's clearly what's been talked about. But
39:09
if we pop on one more, this one I found quite interesting and it
39:14
was the title of this document that caught my eye International Horizon Scanning and Learning
39:21
to inform Wales COVID nineteen Public Health Response and Recovery. Now, I started
39:28
to see documents about horizon scanning way back I'm going to say maybe fifteen years
39:32
ago, and I was seeing those to do with the European Union. But
39:37
I found it a very cold language. It was all like a laboratory experiment
39:43
going on. That's how I saw. Longitudinal studies was another expression that they
39:50
used, and here's horizon scanning. But in this in this one, you
39:57
had picked out that schools formal teaching would disappear all together due to rapid advancements
40:05
in artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality. And I think this is very
40:12
significant. It says and the Internet of things. So this is very very
40:20
deep change policy that you're witnessing. Their schools in their present form are to
40:28
be no more in the future. Yes, Well, what got me into
40:32
all this was I began seeing that the containment policies as they were called,
40:38
the lockdowns, and the way they were being reported on the BBC and on
40:43
Sky News, it was all very convenient. It was, you know,
40:47
they were saying, well, how wonderful this is really because you know,
40:51
we're having animals are roaming again and the planet is you know, this is
41:00
going to be much better for the planet. And I thought, this is
41:01
all very this is feeding in nicely to the next zero talk, and so
41:08
of course that got me looking into these policies. I had an article published
41:14
then on TCW and it was called Wales and a very Convenient Pandemic, and
41:19
basically I tried to highlight the fact that there was certain that the lockdowns in
41:27
Wales were sort of some of the so called remedies and were conducive to plans
41:35
that had already been put in place prior to twenty twenty. You know.
41:40
I went back and I looked at the Public Health Whales tenure health strategy and
41:45
that was quite revealing, you know, and they were starting to talk about
41:50
planetary health, so that you know, everything is into related animal health,
41:54
human health, planetary health is all into related and it was the horizon scanning.
42:01
I think there was a monthly publication going out on this IHCC, the
42:07
International Health Coordination Center, and they were talking about they were looking at aspects
42:14
of the lockdowns around the world and how and you know, what was happening
42:19
in various countries and yeah, and then I saw that about the schools and
42:24
I thought, well, they were already planning for in Wales for around thirty
42:31
percent of public sector workers to work remotely because of the environment. For example,
42:37
they were saying that the NHS being the largest carbon emitter, the public
42:44
sector carbon emitter, you know, they would want they were looking for feasibility
42:49
studies to be done for up to thirty percent of NHS to work remotely.
42:55
And so I thought, well, that's interesting when you look at the fact
42:59
that the face to face GP appointments had disappeared for a while and to a
43:06
large extent are still not back to normal. So yeah, I had that
43:12
article published and interestingly, a number of the links in the article have now
43:17
broken. They've been changed the public healthway, as you know. I don't
43:21
know whether that's a coincidence or what. It's not a coincidence, Nicola.
43:25
This happens to too often. If we go back through some of the archived
43:32
or older documents on UK column, the links have disappeared. It is a
43:38
big problem because linking in articles makes them very relevant and easy to read at
43:45
the time. But clearly local authorities and the government are going back and removing
43:52
documents and statements from the Internet. There's no question that that's happening. Can
43:58
I just because I got it on screen and I'm really fascinated about this one.
44:01
You'd also picked up on this particular page which called itself spotlight example on
44:08
travel sorry transport an active travel. And then the first sentence here says during
44:15
the first wave of the COVID nineteen pandemic there was little to no traveling permitted
44:20
in Wales as the population was required stay at home unless it was for an
44:24
essential journey. And it goes on and then it says the pandemic provides an
44:30
opportunity to reflect and refocus on reducing people's carbon footprints and have co benefits to
44:39
health and the economy. And again this to me was very much like we're
44:45
laborats and these people weren't feeling sympathy or empathy for the population during COVID.
44:54
COVID was simply something that happened where they were able to and monitor a number
45:00
of changes, and they are now putting in in documents saying well, as
45:06
a result of this happening during lockdown, we can now see how we can
45:10
change travel, we can change people's working habits in order to make what utopia
45:20
for the future. It's just as though we are the lab rats. That's
45:23
the feeling I get when I read the documents. Absolutely, yes, I
45:29
always felt to me, it always felt like a mass social experiment. And
45:35
you know, we even had the Deputy Minister at the time in Wales and
45:40
Chief Whip Jane Hutt, she was saying, well, just four weeks into
45:45
lockdown that we cannot go back to business as normal. And of course then
45:51
we also had Nicholas Sturgeon in Scotland advocating. She was advocating for a well
45:55
being economy just a couple of weeks prior to the pandemic response. And the
46:01
more I look through the documents, the policy documents, you know, for
46:07
example, I got one written here, a quote written here from a document
46:13
called Beyond Recycling, and it says we already have a strong foundation for a
46:19
circular economy. In Wales, this was demonstrated by how our communities responded to
46:23
the pandemic, coming together to collaborate, act and share resources. We connected.
46:29
We reconnected with our local areas, walking and appreciating our green spaces and
46:34
nature. As many of us walked from home. We shopped and used local
46:37
businesses and sourced local products. We made more of the resources we had,
46:42
and we shared and swapped locally the things we no longer needed. We used
46:45
our vehicles a lot less. And you know, you can just tell reading
46:51
some of that it's it's nonsense. Really, I mean, we didn't we
46:52
didn't shop and use our local businesses because a lot of them weren't allowed to
46:57
open. Just pushed back a little bit on the thing that you say it's
47:00
nonsense, and I completely understand why, but of course it's very serious nonsense
47:07
because at the end of the day, these nonsensical policies are being used to
47:12
change our lives. So, you know, we can call it nonsense,
47:15
but actually the effects of it are very serious and the average person simply simply
47:22
has no idea what's actually coming. The person on the street in Wales or
47:28
England has no idea that their local authorities are following through on these policies.
47:36
Yes, absolutely, And then this is why I started a sub stack then
47:40
to focus on the Welsh policy policies that are online. I'm trying desperately to
47:50
get people to see what's coming and to consider you know, what's being said
47:55
in these policy documents. But you know you're getting a response to what you've
48:01
been writing and talking about. Do you see people responding? Well, yes,
48:06
I've got I mean, I've got a few hundred followers and I'm getting
48:09
you know, positive feedback. I haven't had anybody sort of contradict anything I've
48:16
said, but it's quite frustrating the lack of awareness. I don't know if
48:22
it's the same everywhere, but particularly in Wales, it is the same everywhere.
48:29
Yeah, there's no question of this. Let's push on through because we've
48:34
got a couple of water to show the audience. But you've also picked up
48:38
on this document net zero carbon status by twenty thirty, Net zero carbon status
48:45
by twenty thirty, a route map for decarbonization across the Welsh public sector.
48:52
So this is another one of these policies which we'll say, come out of
48:58
nowhere as far as most people concerned. But it's talking about radical change of
49:02
the whole of the public sector in Wales. No public debate presumably, I
49:12
would suspect little public debate in the Welsh government. It's simply a policy which
49:20
is now creeping out through the local authorities and being enacted. Yes, And
49:24
it's just mind boggling. I mean I've only just started to touch the scratch
49:30
the surface really, but when you see the amount of publications, the amount
49:34
of consultations, the amount of surveys that have been going on in the last
49:39
ten years particular specifically, it's just mind boggling. You know, we've got
49:45
think tanks, we've got community interest companies coming out with things, we've got
49:50
social purpose companies and it's they seem to want to be wanted to micromanage every
49:57
single aspect of our lives, from health to you know, travel homes and
50:06
they want us to decarbonize our homes by twenty fifty. You know, this
50:10
has coming ideal prompts there to come up with the Carbon Trust. So this
50:15
is NHS Wales Decarbonization Strategic Delivery Plan. It says about the Carbon Trust established
50:24
in two thousand and one, working with businesses, governments and institutions around the
50:30
world, helping them contribute to and benefit from a more sustainable future through carbon
50:37
reduction. They do give the names of the people involved, but what you
50:40
see as a partnership between the Welsh government and the public sector and the Carbon
50:46
Trust. But you know, what do we really know about them? You
50:52
know, how did they get in their positions of authority in the first place.
50:58
I've looked at the Carbon Trust before and you say, it's like they
51:01
suddenly appeared out of nowhere. And then they are in advising governments not only
51:07
in UK Wales, UK, but also around the world. Yes, and
51:13
it's all been done very quietly. You know, everything is done very surreptitiously.
51:17
You know, we don't get to say in anything these some of the
51:22
consultations, well, for example, we've got we've actually we're actually committed through
51:30
a piece of legislation called the well Being of Future Generations Act to Sustainable Development.
51:38
This Act was passed in twenty fifteen, the same year as the United
51:44
Nations Sustainable Development Goals came into being. Coincidentally, it's said to be an
51:50
exemplar of innovation on governance for sustainable development, and apparently there had been a
51:58
national conversation which took place in twenty fourteen, the year before this, But
52:05
this national consultation only involved six four hundred and seventy four people. It was
52:10
called the Wales We Want. And amazingly, the top the general public who
52:17
participated in this, and I've not met anybody that did, they put climate
52:24
change as the top priority, above education, employment, housing, health,
52:31
crime and violence. You know, it's just astounding. It is astounding.
52:40
It's astounding how policy can come in extra external to government, because this is
52:46
not in the first instant policy that's come from national governments. This has come
52:52
from international bodies such as the World Health Organization and the UN itself, all
53:02
the World Economic Forum. It's those sorts of global bodies which are making this
53:08
policy. And yet we're now living in a world where we're seeing it enacted
53:13
right down at local authority level. It's quite incredible the speed that it's come
53:19
in and the depth, and just because I can see it queued up on
53:23
screen. Smart cities, of course, and smart working is a big part
53:29
of the future that they envisage, and this one says that smart working will
53:36
never be able to replace the majority of North Wales sorry oft NHS Whales frontline
53:40
services. Nevertheless, the following initiatives and key actions are set out to ensure
53:46
that the advantages of smart working can be incorporated into the day to day running
53:52
of NHS Wales where feasible. Now, if we just expand that, because
53:58
you've used your highlighting pen again, it says increasing the community outreach by providing
54:06
health and social care from hub locations closer to home. And what they're doing
54:12
is looking at the proportion of the workforce that could feasibly work remotely and to
54:17
actively encourage staff to work remotely where this can be feasibly achieved. But they
54:22
recognize that in some parts of rural Wales this will not be possible without infrastructure
54:29
upgrades. So we can't provide medical care for people at present. I think
54:38
that's a true statement. The NHS is struggling to provide medical care at the
54:44
moment. But not to worry. If we get people working remotely, if
54:49
we get more people working from home, the standard of medical care and treatment
54:54
is going to be better. I'm going to use all words. This has
54:59
got to be non yes, definitely and I was just looking for. I've
55:04
written some notes on the Collabororational Health Organization. You know, it's meant to
55:12
be sharing expertise globally and it's all going to be for the benefit of the
55:20
health the people of Wales eventually, and yet at the moment I think,
55:24
well, we've probably got possibly the worst health service in the whole of the
55:30
United Kingdom. Well, certainly, Debbie Evans would say, if she was
55:32
here with us today, we actually don't have a medical healthcare system operating in
55:38
this country anymore. She's very happy to say, if you analyze what's there
55:44
and how appallingly it works, and we can say with no disrespect to many
55:50
of the staff who are doing their best in the increasing chaos. But Debbie
55:54
would say, you look at it, we really haven't got a healthcare system.
56:00
But we have all this planning for the future, So future whales.
56:06
That's a good topic. You've got a national Plan twenty forty and all of
56:10
this one seems to be based around climate change. Is that about right?
56:15
Yes, I would say so. And again that was another publication that I
56:22
based one of my TCW articles on. It's a very lengthy publication, and
56:30
yes, as as the graphic which I highlighted illustrates, it says it's based
56:37
upon a fiftieth percentI projection, which means that outcomes are as likely as unlikely
56:44
to happen. And you think, but what does all this come Well,
56:49
what does this actually mean. Let's help the viewers out of it and just
56:52
read a few of the things, because it's got projections as a result of
56:57
climate changed for whales for twenty fifty in the first column and twenty eighty in
57:02
the second column. So it's saying summer average temperatures in Wales are going to
57:07
increase by one point three four degrees c twenty fifty and three point zero three
57:16
degrees c in twenty eighty. And the one I noticed, particularly because it's
57:22
been a bit gloomy and rainy here is summer precipitation in Wales is projected to
57:29
decrease by sixteen percent in twenty fifty, and in twenty eighty, summer precipitation
57:37
in Wales is going to decrease by twenty three percent. And if we ask
57:42
where is the evidence to support these figures, I'm going to guess I haven't
57:47
been able to go all the way through the document, but I'm going to
57:51
guess there's not a lot of factual evidence to support those claims. Yes,
57:55
exactly. And one of the interesting things in that Future Way document was the
58:00
fact that they want to increase the population density in urban areas as well.
58:06
I think it's something like they want to increase it to fifty dwellings per hector.
58:13
It doesn't actually from memory, doesn't actually say why, but that you
58:20
know, I know that for example, where I live in Pembrokeshire, people
58:24
are asking questions about the freeport and a friend of mine hasn't been able to
58:31
get an actual, a definitive boundary of this freeport and the implications, and
58:37
you know, people are wondering what will they be looking to move people out
58:43
of this freeport boundary for any reason, you know? And are they looking
58:47
to have get people moving away from coastal areas? But it's all very yeah,
58:58
it's all very conclusive. It's the word yet and necholet what about the
59:05
politicians themselves in Wales? Are there any of them that you can say are
59:10
showing signs of challenging what's happening or are they all conforming with the policy through
59:17
their party structure? To be perfectly honest, I don't take an awful lot
59:22
of notice of what's going on in the Senate. You know, it's to
59:28
me, it's it's a lot of pantomime, a lot of posturing, a
59:31
lot of virtue signaling. I'm more I've taken more in interest in the actual
59:37
policy. That's that's what worries me. You know, I've I've been in
59:43
contact with my local member of the Senate and he's been polite and quite helpful,
59:46
but he's in the monot you know, he's a conservative. Yeah,
59:54
I don't really think there's there's any viable opposition in Wales. And the way
59:59
that talking about expanding the senees to increase the number of Senate members, the
1:00:07
way it's looking is that we'll never ever have a change of government. We'll
1:00:12
be stuck with a labor Welsh labor or labor applied coalition forevermore unless people get
1:00:19
out there and really push to change that system. And this is where it's
1:00:24
a little bit sad, because people can do a lot if enough people actually
1:00:29
stand up to say no, we're not having this, because they could of
1:00:32
course put up independent counselors, sorry, independent candidates. Yes, I just
1:00:40
feel that, I just feel that there is an awful lot of apathy and
1:00:45
ways, and a lot of people vote labor because I mean, I'm politically
1:00:51
homeless, by the way, I'll just state that now, but I'm not
1:00:53
just anti labor. But yeah, too many people vote labor because they're parents,
1:01:00
did their fathers and the brown fathers, and yeah, yes, this
1:01:07
is true. I just wanted to say that I got an email this morning
1:01:13
from a lady in Australia and when I read it through, I thought,
1:01:16
well, this is really interesting. I'll add it to the end of your
1:01:22
interview today and if we pop that up on screen. The text is a
1:01:25
bit small, so i'll keep it very simple. But this is Mara who's
1:01:31
in New South Wales, and she's put forward. It's either an email or
1:01:38
a letter, but it says recently, I spoke for less than five minutes
1:01:43
at the public forum Midwestern Regional Council. MAGI if I pronounced that properly,
1:01:50
I think this is New South Wales. Goes on say the verbal presentation was
1:01:55
not recorded by a Midwestern Regional Council to my knowledge, although I note that
1:02:00
other councils, such as Melbourne include the public forum in the records of the
1:02:07
Council for public viewing. There is a sign in the council chambers indicating that
1:02:13
recordings of public meetings are prohibited. So what this tells me is there's a
1:02:17
challenge going on to the local council. And where I'm coming to is that
1:02:23
it goes on to talk about the climate change agenda, and this sentence says
1:02:30
it all seems to revolve around the dreaded climate change agenda. The New South
1:02:35
Wales government will be releasing that document in twenty twenty four, it's not available
1:02:40
yet. And the reason I'm talking about this email is that you are there
1:02:45
in Wales and you're talking about a Welsh government policy documents driven by climate change,
1:02:54
and here we've got a person in Wales, sorry, in New South
1:02:59
Wales Australia also talking about exactly the same sort of documents which are driving matters
1:03:06
to do with climate change. And later it goes on to talk about smart
1:03:10
meters, smart surveillance, et cetera. So it's very clear that the policies
1:03:16
that you've discovered at work in South Wales, South Wales, in the UK
1:03:22
and what we've got happening on the other side of the globe. They are
1:03:28
so alike that this has got to be a common global agenda that we're now
1:03:32
experiencing at local level. Definitely. Yeah, And I feel like that the
1:03:37
global answer to COVID the lockdowns were a sort of dry ren for the changes.
1:03:47
You know that the solutions to the climate agenda, Yes, they're so
1:03:53
called solutions. Yeah, Nikola, thank you very much. It's been really
1:03:59
interesting in going through this. There's there's a lot more to be talked about
1:04:02
here, but in the first instance, I want to just thank you for
1:04:06
having the courage to stand up and challenge the NHS of of your aunt,
1:04:12
because I know that does take courage to do that, and then you've you've
1:04:15
had enough fire in you to get on and really start looking at these policy
1:04:19
documents. I often ask this question, and I need to do it with
1:04:24
you. What would you like the UK column audience to do? How can
1:04:28
they how can they stand up against this? What would you like to see
1:04:32
them do? How can they help you? Well, if there's anybody well,
1:04:36
I'm sure there are plenty of people listening in Wales, I would be
1:04:41
grateful if they would just take a look at my TCW articles on Wales and
1:04:45
my seb Stack page on Wes and just read and digest and share as much
1:04:51
as they as they can. I know that our elected representatives are not are
1:05:00
not very effective. Unfortunately, you know, We've started challenging our local council
1:05:04
members. I've got a couple of friends, Helen and Sharon, who I
1:05:09
know have been in contact with with the Your program. They've been putting in
1:05:14
freedom of information requests and challenging counselors. But unfortunately, it appears that even
1:05:21
in our local council, we've got council members who blindly voted for a climate
1:05:27
emergency a couple of years ago and now regretting it. But we just need
1:05:32
to you know, I've been challenging my counselor and he's coming back to me
1:05:36
saying, oh, yes, I wouldn't I don't think I'd be very I
1:05:40
wouldn't be happy if we're council tax was going to be aligned to how carbon
1:05:45
efficient our homes are in the future. But this is you know, this
1:05:49
is what has been recommended, and yet the count that these local counselors have
1:05:56
no knowledge of these things, you know, right, So I just did
1:06:00
urge people to look into who's on their council and contact them and for what
1:06:05
it's worth, it may not achieve anything, but it's better to have tried
1:06:09
and failed and not to have tried at all. And what about people challenging
1:06:13
the council. You've done it, but do you have anything equivalent to counsel
1:06:17
Watch that seems to be growing in various areas around the country where people are
1:06:23
going into the council meetings and putting evidence on the table to challenge some of
1:06:29
these policies. Do you have an equivalent of council Watch running at all in
1:06:34
your area or in Wales that you know about? No, not that I
1:06:40
know about. And I mean, as I said, there's a few of
1:06:43
us who've started to challenge our local council, but we're trying to sort of
1:06:46
find more information about and how the whole system works and what we can attend
1:06:55
because I have been following some of the other people in the parts of the
1:07:00
country and it's great to see them going in and actually showing the evidence.
1:07:05
But I've been in contact with one counselor who I know is skeptical and we've
1:07:12
asked him to meet up with us, but he's not really forthcoming. You
1:07:15
know, he's on the one hand he's saying yes, he thinks it's nonsense.
1:07:20
On the other hand, he seems a bit reluctant to actually meet with
1:07:24
us and to share a little bit of inside knowledge about the best way to
1:07:29
challenge. Yeah, that's a good point, but as you've just said,
1:07:33
we need people to do something so at least you can say you stood up
1:07:38
and fought the system. Okay, I'm going to say thank you very much
1:07:45
for joining me today and taking us through that. In my mind, I've
1:07:49
got I think we need to do a little bit more work to see whether
1:07:54
we can help the people who are getting involved with their counsels to be together
1:08:00
and sharing information and a little bit of know how. We've talked to some
1:08:04
of the people involved in Council Watch to say maybe we should get you together
1:08:10
to talk about what you see and how you're doing things. And if we
1:08:15
were able to do that, I'd love to give you an invite to put
1:08:18
your pennyworth in as to what's possible and maybe not possible in Wales. I
1:08:25
think this would be very interesting. Okay, well, thank you, thank
1:08:29
you very much. And what's planned for the rest of the afternoon walking the
1:08:33
dogs. Yes, I think I will go out and stretch my legs now
1:08:36
after that, some fresh all morning in anticipation of this chat. So yeah,
1:08:44
go and de stress with the two French bulldogs, and I very much
1:08:47
hope you'll come and join us again. Thank you, thank you very much.
1:08:50
Thank you very much briant me to chat with you. Bye bye.