gill

[Dr Rachel Clarke @doctor_oxford]

This is Trevor Fisher, an inpatient in @ArthurRankHouse in Cambridgeshire, speaking to @Channel4News this week.

I am a palliative care specialist and Trevor’s interview has devastated me.

His hospice has just found out that in 6 months, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust will withdraw its £800k funding.

This means that 9 of the hospice’s 16 beds will close, denying patients like Trevor the precious end-of-life care they need.

In total, 200 people a year in Cambridgeshire will now be forced to die in an overcrowded hospital instead of the hospice environment they so longed for. Some will doubtless end up dying on trolleys in corridors - we witness this far too often, these days & I can tell you, it is barbaric.

@CUH_NHS says it has made this “very difficult decision” following a “value for money assessment” - confirming what I have long known as a doctor, that too often, patients with terminal illnesses are treated as second class citizens whose lives simply don’t matter as much as other people's.

Yet the real responsibility here lies not with the NHS trust but with the current government, who is forcing the NHS nationwide to cut clinical services in order to meet impossible “efficiency savings” (what weasel words those are).

These cuts were necessary, say @CUH_NHS, “in order to maintain core services within a reduced budget” - that is to say, the reduced budget they are now receiving from this government.

So this is on you, @wesstreeting, and on you @UKLabour. You've chosen to do this & now patients like Trevor must live - and die - with your choices.

I believe that the measure of a civilised country is how well it cares for its most vulnerable members. The difference between politicians and me is that I look the palliative care patients they are failing in the eye.

So I will put it to you directly, Mr Streeting.

We are still a rich country capable of affording decent, humane palliative care for all. Do you really care so little for dying people that you are happy to fail them on your watch?

Thank you @channel4news for covering this story.

#palliativecare
#hospicecare
#NHS

[Edward Parnell @edward_parnell]

Just unblock their nest holes, @networkrail. Please share!
https://t.co/kLw3RS4Lyy

[gill @forester35]

@rothiemoon @old_caley Appalling!

[Olly Mead @OllyMead1]

The beautiful #PAOTY episode where Jane Goodall had her portrait done springs to mind tonight. @skyarts why not re-broadcast it as a tribute to a great mind who we sadly lost today? Both the artist and viewers connected with the sitter in this programme. It's TV at its best.

[Hilda McEvoy @HildaMcevoy]

Caught up on the commisson programme of #PAOTY & thought Wendy Barrat's painting of Dr. Jane Goodall was just beautiful 👏

[Tiberius @tiberiusfiles]

There has never been a better time to watch this video

[Michael Rosen 💙💙🎓🎓 NICE 爷爷 @MichaelRosenYes]

He was right.
Every word of it.

[gill @forester35]

@ASPaton 😢

[Caroline Lucas @CarolineLucas]

.⁦⁦@RSBenwell⁩ is right - exempting small sites means almost three-quarters of developments face no requirement to compensate for nature loss - let alone enhance it. Govt pledges to restore nature aren’t worth the paper they were written on 👇 https://t.co/inKMXhOXSJ

[James Rebanks @herdyshepherd1]

I’m calling it now… the last goverment was until recently one of the worst of all time for nature, farming and food policies

THIS GOVERNMENT IS WORSE

And I have a little theory about what’s happening…

🧵

[Caroline Lucas @CarolineLucas]

WTF? If Govt can’t even agree to this, which costs them zero & with no down-sides, what hope that it will step up to the bigger nature challenges we face? This is a *popular* policy, for heavens sake. Obstinate tin-eared stupidity doesn’t come close
https://t.co/gh0wavpcm5

[Caroline Lucas @CarolineLucas]

If we are to reverse the terrifying state of nature in this country - fields doused in poison, woodlands being destroyed, sewage in our waterways - we must literally make a home for nature. Mandatory swift bricks is a small, but vitally important, step towards that.

My speech 👇

[Patrick Barkham @patrick_barkham]

An early HAPPY 99th BIRTHDAY Sir David! Thank you all the amazing nature people I spoke to who contributed lessons they've learned from David Attenborough to this fantastic @guardian tribute... https://t.co/dqSC5HBmaZ

[Tim Birch @TimBirchWild]

So far this incredible display of cuckoo flowers on grass verge on A40 outside Scleddau in #Pembrokeshire has not been mown. @Pembrokeshire County Council can you please NOT mow this. Its a crucial food source for caterpillars of Orange Tip #butterfly We need more unmown spaces!

[gill @forester35]

Labour’s great nature sellout is the worst attack on England’s ecosystems I’ve seen in my lifetime | George Monbiot https://t.co/wabHScOQVl

[Mary Colwell @curlewcalls]

It’s hard to know where to go with this bill. It appears to be a disaster of monumental proportions. At a time when nature needs us to stand strong, we are exchanging it as a commodity in a bad deal. Thank you
@GeorgeMonbiot for this cry of anger. https://t.co/AS74jp1zZA

[Caroline Lucas @CarolineLucas]

This #EarthDay2025 seems a good moment to share some wonderful Gerard Manley Hopkins:
“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”

[Caroline Lucas @CarolineLucas]

Hugely important warning: allowing cheaper US food imports that don’t meet the same environmental & animal protection standards as British farmers would sound a death knell for UK farms & rural communities. It must not be part of any future trade deal https://t.co/KSNoLNegRP