"When things don't look good who you gonna call.........Emergency Services!"

Last week, as we returned from holiday, Pat and I were involved in a minor, but frightening, motoring accident on the M5 motorway. We were driving at about 60 mph in a line of cars in the middle lane and passing some slow moving lorries on the inside lane when one of the lorries pulled out. I was suddenly aware of the large vehicle, slightly behind me and in the corner of my eye as he drifted into our lane and a split second later we were being pushed into the outside lane which was busy with fast moving traffic. The car began to wobble and skid. There was a dreadful grating sound as the lorry’s wheels hit the rear wing and door of our car and I found myself trying to control the skid and at the same time trying to prevent us from hitting something in the outside lane. More by luck than judgement I got the car back on track and we pulled up on the hard shoulder in front of the lorry as the motorway traffic thundered along beside us.

We leapt out of the car to survey the damage – it was not as bad as I feared but clearly two new doors and probably a back rear wing would be needed. The driver of the lorry jumped from his cab – a young man and in halting but good English apologised profusely - “I’m sorry, I did not see you”  he said “It is my fault”. It was clear what had happened – or at least to me it was. He was in a left hand drive Czechoslovakian lorry so was on the opposite side of the cab to where we were in his right hand lane. We were low down, he was high up – he simply did not see us as were below him and almost past him when he pulled out. Rightly or wrongly we were in a bit of a blind spot from where he sat.

My poorly car as it stood by the side of the M5!

We  were quite shaken – although not in any way injured. I was also anxious that given that the accident involved a Czechoslovakian vehicle driven, it transpired, by a Romanian there were potential language difficulties so I was anxious to do things correctly. We called the police and within a few minutes paramedics arrived and shortly after that the police. Fortunately the weather was good but the speeding and roaring traffic at the side of us, the flashing blue lights, the damaged car and being surrounded by men in bright orange jackets made it all the sort of situation that one always dreads. The lorry seemed unmarked – in fact I think it was the huge tyres of the vehicle that had done most of the damage – there were (and still are) great black burn marks on the side of my car where the spinning tyres had welded onto the paintwork. The police, however, checked over my vehicle and confirmed that it was not seriously damaged and perfectly alright to drive.

The paramedics gave me a thorough and skilful check over – they were worried that my irregular heart beat and blood pressure were a serious cause for concern and tried to insist that they take me to hospital for a thorough check up. I refused this so they insisted on making me sit in their vehicle for half an hour or so while they monitored everything until my body settled down. They then insisted that we should stop at the next service area for an extended break before continuing with our journey – advice we were only too willing to take. The two paramedics were absolutely outstanding - in their skills, their compassion, their kindness and their courtesy. And while all this was going on the police, complete with foreign language phrase books, were establishing the details of the accident, checking out all the documentation and ensuring that the correct paperwork was completed. They soon provided reassurance that all was in order on everybody’s part. And the most appreciated thing? – that they insisted on waiting until all my medical checks were complete just in case some other problem  turned up. After about an hour or so we pulled off the hard shoulder – Pat driving - and the police, paramedics and, indeed, the lorry driver waving us on our way.

Thankfully not my bump - but all that is needed
is there and available!

It was a long journey home but all went well and, of course, since then I have been sorting out getting my car repaired and dealing with car insurance matters – my damaged vehicle sits on the drive but will be repaired next week. As we have told ourselves many times over the past few days we were very, very lucky but as well as this feeling of personal gratitude other things have been going through my mind.

Firstly, and strangely when I woke up last Wednesday morning, packed the car for our journey home and left our hotel I had no inkling that within a couple of hours I would be dealing with a completely alien situation. How unexpected life is! I had no suspicion that the path of my life would cross with that of a completely unknown person from a far off land – and who I will probably never meet again. And yet for those few seconds of the accident and its immediate aftermath a large number of things will kick in – police statements, medical reports, insurance company documentation, bills to be paid and all the rest. How complex is the web of life – that on a motorway in middle England our lives will be forever crossed with a young man from Bucherest!

When I returned home and got down to contacting my insurance company I looked at the details in the various documents that the police had provided and had been completed. The lorry driver had completed his paperwork but of course it was in Romanian and yet the lorry’s company name and all the business details and addresses were Czechoslovakian so I spent a little time making sure that I had the details – names, addresses, insurance company, employer’s address etc. set out in some meaningful manner – so that I could answer the insurance company’s questions easily. By using Google, Google translate, and the wider internet I was quickly able to find out all I needed to know – how small the world now is - my life crossing the path of a man from middle Europe and modern technology giving me immediate access to all that I need to know about him and his world. Whilst checking the details of his address on Google maps I was able to see where he lived in Bucherest – the magic of the internet allowed me to see the block of flats where lives and to see a photo of the grassy knoll with the children’s playground and children using the swings outside his apartment block. I saw the gates at his employer’s base where, presumably, he will drive his lorry when he returns to Prague and despite my distress and anger at being involved in an incident that was in no way my fault I bear the young man no malice. It was a complete accident – I have made many wrong decisions when out on the road and can only look at the incident and think of that young Romanian man and reflect “it could have been me”. He was in a foreign land and a long way from home - I hope that he gets back to his home safely and his life goes on. Only a few weeks ago I was driving around France and his situation could have just as easily been mine. When the accident first happened I was angry – “What on earth were you thinking about”  I demanded of him. He held his hands out and said “I’m sorry – my fault – I didn’t see you”  I can’t help feeling just a little bit guilty now that I was not more understanding.

We all take our lives in our hands in these conditions

And the emergency services – police and paramedics? It is a sad indictment that we only take these people seriously when we need them. And yet hour after hour, day after day they pick up the pieces of society’s ills – drunken nights out in city centres, life and death situations in hospital A&E units, sorting out often fatal road accidents and lesser incidents like mine, dangerous situations such as fires or fights or the results of criminal action that can put these people themselves in danger. When a major incident occurs our politicians stand up and praise the efforts of our wonderful emergency services – police, firemen, paramedics, ambulance drivers, nurses, doctors and the rest – but in the blink of an eye this lavish praise is soon forgotten when issues of remuneration or pension rights or working conditions are discussed. I read at the moment that firemen are being asked to work until later in life because we cannot afford their pensions. The firemen (I think perfectly reasonably) point out that sending a sixty year old man into a blaze is not desirable – it’s a young man’s job. Only a few months ago the police were told that despite their great contribution to society they would have to accept cuts in their numbers, poorer conditions of service and significant pay restraint. Many of the people involved in our A&E department are at the lower end of the pay scale and tales are rife of the long hours they are often forced to work because as a society we are unwilling to pay a few pennies more in tax to ensure that their services are properly funded and work conditions reflect the responsibility they carry and esteem in which they should be held. Politicians’ praise is, it seems, a thin veneer when it comes to rewarding those who serve our most basic of needs and who are the ultimate guarantors of our well being in extreme situations. Politicians are very good at climbing on the praise bandwagon when it suits them – after all, it will earn a few more votes at the polling booth. They are less forthcoming when it comes to putting their hands in their pocket when it comes to reward and rate for the job!

In the society in which we live where everything has a price and where litigation is increasingly the order of the day we all consistently demand the best at the cheapest rate. When we witness something that falls below what we demand and we complain. We see this week in week out – we have great scandals when a hospital, the police service, a school or social services falls below what we feel is the demanded perfection; we litigate when the care home that we have stuffed our elderly relative into because we are unable or unwilling to share the responsibility ourselves does not meet our ideas of paradise; we complain when we shop around for the cheapest and then find that it doesn’t quite do what it says on the tin. In short we all want paradise – but at rock bottom prices. This might be alright when I am buying an unnecessary item – the latest bit of technology or that cheap pair of jeans for my holiday, but even then a few thoughtful moments will inform me that my cheap technology or my holiday jeans usually only come cheap  because they have been produced by people in some far off land who will never glimpse the paradise and relative luxury in which I live. In the final analysis things haven’t changed much throughout history – the rich live the lives they do because of the efforts of the poor.

Clearing up society's ills - and without the million pound
annualbonuses expected by bankers and the CEOs
of our energy companies to ensure they are motivated!

But when it comes to the basic needs of man and society – the sort of things that those involved in the emergency services provide - a different set of values must operate. In this context if we want paradise for the very basics of life – indeed, often the sustaining of life - then cheapness and best value are not the essential criteria or descriptors.  For in those situations we want a system that works at its best and a system that ensures that those involved in providing those basic and critical emergency services are motivated, skilled, able and properly supported to carry out their work. Anything less and it is me, you, our children, the old and the rest who ultimately suffer. As I stood by my damaged car last week and the traffic thundered past and my dodgy heart went into overdrive I didn’t want second best help. I didn't want policemen who didn’t see me as a priority because of their work load or  paramedics who didn’t have the right equipment or support or time. I wanted  the best that our society could provide. And I’m sure this is what we all feel in any similar situation – when an elderly relative is in a care home, when our child lies in hospital, when a loved one is rushed into A&E, when flames engulf our home then cost ceases to be important, it is the quality of the people that matter - and throughout history and even more so today quality costs.  

In any walk of life quality – especially if it has an ethical or moral dimension - does not come cheap: if I want the latest technology not made in some far eastern sweat shop made on the backs of very poor people then I will have to pay more. If I want to be tended in my hospital or care home by the very best qualified and motivated people - motivated because they themselves are well rewarded, supported and qualified  and their value and cost recognised – then I must be prepared to pay for it. In our current topsy-turvy world governments, the city and the big corporations tell us that the banker, the city trader and the managing director must be well rewarded, have hefty annual bonuses and share options, tax breaks and a myriad of other perks in order that they are motivated to do their job to the best of their ability. If they don’t have these perks we are informed they will leave and go elsewhere. And so just like travellers of old held up by the highwayman we pay up to these fat cats and captains of industry as they point their gun to our heads. But when the nurse or the care worker or the firemen or the policeman says “I need better conditions of service, more security in my job, more support  or a better rate of pay” they are accused of being greedy, they are “on a collision course with the government” or they are "jeopardising the national interest". Their demands can only be met if there are efficiency savings elsewhere. The price of their labour and commitment, unlike banker, city trader or CEO, is measured in terms of cheapness and value for money rather than its ability to motivate and encourage their continuing best efforts! And yet, these are the people that we turn to when we are in greatest need. Sixty years ago that most passionate and honest of politicians Nye Bevan (a man whose integrity and sense of values would be viewed with alarm by the present incumbents of Westminster) said:  "We could manage to survive without money changers and stockbrokers. We should find it harder to do without miners, steel workers and those who cultivate the land". What would he say today when the lobbyist, the banker, the city trader and the MP take preference in the rewards stakes over the nurse, the fireman, the paramedic and the policeman? Our society can, as Bevan noted, largely manage without the banker and the city trader - it would be an infinitely poorer place without the labour and commitment of those who serve us in life and death situations. And yet who do we choose to value most highly by the rewards that we pay?

When Avon and Somerset Police and the paramedics of the South Western Ambulance Service pulled up on the hard shoulder of the M5 last Wednesday morning we were given outstanding support and assistance. I suppose that in their terms it was no big deal – no terrible injuries, no great traffic jams, no unpleasant mess to clear up. They could easily had a quick look and gone on their way. They didn’t – they did their job professionally and thoroughly but more importantly with kindness, care, courtesy and attention to me, my wife and the lorry driver. One might say that they went the extra mile – but that is a modern form of patronisation. They didn’t go the extra mile, they didn't need the annual share option or fat cat bonus before they raised themselves. They simply did their job, as I am sure that they always do, to the best of their ability. How different this from the disdainful and couldn't care less response that I had recently from my local MP, Ken Clarke, when I asked for his views on an item of his government's policy (see blog:  http://www.arbeale.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/incompetent-lacking-integrity-insincere.html ).

But that is what we have come to expect of our emergency services - the best - and in doing so we take them for granted. Sadly, together with hospitals, schools, care homes, fire brigades, social workers and the rest these people  provide the very greatest necessities of life and we all too often don’t recognise their role as they clean up the mess that we all leave behind us. And while they are still doing it, day in day out, we have moved on, the accident behind us, the insurance claim sorted out, the world set to rights and we forget them until the next time we need them - in an emergency. When we criticise the care home or the hospital, when we moan about the police or think the firemen are wrong to flex their industrial muscle then, just maybe, we are forgetting that it is a sad indictment upon our society – and that means me and you for it is you and me that comprise society. In the end, the words of the song from the film "Ghostbusters" are maybe apposite:

If there's something strange

in your neighborhood

Who you gonna call?

Ghostbusters!

If there's something weird

and it don't look good

Who you gonna call?

Ghostbusters!

Just substitute for Ghostbusters "Paramedics", or "Carer", or "Policeman", or "Nurse" or "Fireman" or "social worker" - and you get the picture! Somehow, I just don't think it works if you substitute "city trader" or "CEO" or "MP" or "banker" for as we know (for bankers and their ilk have often told us so!)  they only work at their best or even get out of bed when annual bonuses and share options are promised or for the MP when a lucrative directorship is offered. So, if you are in danger or desperate, if you or someone close to you, is at their most vulnerable and in extremis  who do you think will serve you best - banker or carer, policeman or city trader, paramedic or CEO, fireman or MP? To coin an awful modern phrase - it's a "no brainer".  It's a modern version of the parable of the Good Samaritan where the real issue and underpinning of the situation is the moral world and actions that the Samaritan, the carer, the paramedic, the teacher and the rest inhabit and subscribe to as opposed to the amoral outlook and unethical practice and promoted by those other inhabitants of the UK - the MPs, bankers, city traders, CEOs and others who are "on the make".

Over recent years, since the time of Thatcher, the world has been theirs and the rest just pick up the pieces. They  have turned Shakespeare's sceptred isle into a septic isle. That we tolerate the great inequalities of pay, position, power and, most worryingly, moral action and viewpoint that are prevalent in our society is a damning indictment of us all.  It should shame us all that we are unwilling (or, maybe, unable - because it will not be politically or economically unacceptable either to the electorate, the government or the banker) to pay that few pence more in tax to ensure those who act on our behalf when we are most in need get the rewards that they deserve, the pay, pensions, working conditions, training and support that reflect the importance of their work and the value and respect that we have for them. Instead, we pay the bonuses and give the perks to the corporate and political highwaymen of the City of London and Westminster.