Shocking health state of our children is a national disgrace

I’m sick to the back teeth of hearing the petty point scoring, silly sparring and squabbling and braying at Prime Minister’s Question time.

I can’t bear hearing politicians paid from the public purse constantly refusing to answer straight questions and persistently deflecting by bad-mouthing their opponents.

I worry about anyone who actually cares about Love Island – and as for Love Island All Stars? What even is that?

I’ve had my fill of excuses. Call centre auto-messages insisting they are extremely busy dealing with a higher than usual volume of calls. They’re not. Or using the pandemic as an excuse for poor service nearly four years on.

I’m tired of being told issues are top priority for the powers that be when they clearly aren’t.

What I do care about - and causes me despair for the future – is how the UK is failing its youngest.

It’s a national scandal and nothing short of horrific to how so many under-fives are overweight and obese with rotting teeth. More than a fifth are overweight or obese and nearly a quarter in England suffering from teeth decay.

This is disgusting.

And how, in 2024, are there rising infant deaths in the UK? The UK is 30th out of 49 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries for infant mortality.

The lives and futures of our tiny tots are in crisis. And who gives a jot?

If we ever needed evidence that Britain is broken, the Academy for Medical Sciences’ report this week showing that poverty was the common thread is it.

Children’s doctors and child health experts said the report was “alarming evidence that the UK is failing too many of its children.”

What does this say about a nation that neglects its children so badly, setting them up for a life of poor health and lost potential.

The prime minister takes a helicopter to avoid traffic jams while the youngest children are being betrayed and denied a healthy start in life.

Add to that the “devastating explosion’ of mental illness among children with the number of children referred to emergency mental healthcare in England soaring by more than 50 per cent in three years, and declining vaccination rates.

More than 600 mentally ill children a week have reached crisis point in official data by the Royal College of Psychiatrists yet waiting lists are an average of five months, with two years in the worst cases.

If a nation is judged by how it treats its youngest, our future is even bleaker than we might have believed.

Dealing with subject of cancer

It wasn’t so long ago that the word ‘cancer’ was treated like a swear word.

It was either never said, whispered as the ‘C-word or ‘Big C’ and discussed in hushed voices with a sad face.

Thank goodness those days are gone and cancer and its treatments are in the open.

The unprecedented revelation that the King has cancer will provoke discussion even more.

But people still don’t know what to say or how to treat people going through it and either avoid mentioning it all together or drop clangers.

An old university friend has just finished her weekly chemotherapy sessions after breast cancer returned 10 years after her first diagnosis and mastectomy.

No one who has lost all her hair, eyebrows and eyelashes wants to be told how she is envied for ‘being able’ to wear an assortment of colourful wigs and take them on and off without having to ‘do their hair’ every day.

Neither do they want to hear how their aunty banished her own tumour by natural remedies and positive thought and didn’t need to go through the gruelling weekly chemo sessions - when they are going through the hellish cycle of chemo then debilitating sickness every seven days.

Nor being asked if she is worried her three daughters could share the gene. Stupid and insensitive.

Personally, my cancer diagnosis 13 years ago wasn’t helped by the medical team who cheerily told me I had the “good cancer -  “if you have to get cancer, it’s the best one to get.”

But if you’ve had it once, chances are higher you get it again. A pretty dumb thing to say to anyone facing two surgeries, radiation and a lifetime living without a vital organ replaced by daily medication.

My advice – listen more than talk, keep opinions and advice to yourself and deliver practical help – doorstep lasagnes, take and collect children from school, mow the grass, vacuum and dust - rather than mumbling empty platitudes and asking if there is anything you can do to help.

Simply take the pressure off.

Recycling the royal wardrobe

The Princess Royal stepped out as president of the UK Fashion and Textiles Association this week wearing her mother’s purple velvet jacket that the late Queen Elizabeth wore in 2006.

A lovely touch by Princess Anne, who has never been embarrassed to repeat an outfit, to delve into her late mother’s wardrobe to give new life to the best bits.

The move was touching as well as giving a nod to reusing and re-loving and showing how classic and timeless styles always works.

It might hold also hold special memories for the Princess Royal.

I hope we see Anne, and even her daughter, Zara, wearing more pieces of the late Queen’s wardrobe.