Oliver Letwin's Rubbish.

Today (14/10/11) Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper published photographs of Conservative MP and Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin dumping documents into a bin in a public park. As the documents were in no way sensitive this seems to just be an enquiry as to why I've been aimlessly wandering around my local park in recent days. Sadly the answer is amazingly dull.

Although I'm reasonably fit I don't spend anywhere near enough time walking and generally standing about. As a result my posture's appalling and my lower back is nowhere near as strong as it should be. This became a problem last week when I strained my lumber discs and lower lats. Or to put it another way I had a bad back. When this happens all you want to do is lie down but the best thing to do is slowly and gently ease out and strengthen the muscles. So this is what I did. Up until now I'd been able to disguise this with long meandering walks to and from the hospital and trips to the shops.

Bizarrely my grandmother's mobility problems are caused by similar issues although her condition is complicated by arthritis and crumbling vertebrae. For the past three years my grandmother's care givers approach to the problem is to confine her to a chair and discourage her from walking or standing. Needless to say my grandmother's mobility problems have not improved and in fact have got worse to the point where now in hospital she actually needs to be confined to bed or a chair until she can undergo a course of physiotherapy.

On a related note the Care Quality Commission (CQC) which regulates care providers in the UK yesterday (13/10/11) released a report that found that care for elderly patients in UK hospitals is shockingly bad and in some cases constituted actual criminal offences. Obviously the main point of this story is that elderly care in UK hospitals is shockingly bad. However there is a reasonable chance that my grandmother's case will end up with the CQC so this seems to be them trying to avoid that by giving a warning to my grandmother's care team. I actually think it's a shame that the CQC seem to be hesitant to do their job. After all they actually have law enforcement powers so if they find evidence of criminal conduct surely they should be prosecuting rather then just publishing reports about it.