In a hospital in Liverpool, people are lying across the floor as they wait for a bed on one of the hospital's wards. One woman has been in Accident & Emergency (A&E) for 30 hours, she will wait another 17 in this packed room.

A grim thread which shows NHS winter crisis is here Laura Jones was shocked at what she saw when she walked into the A&E department of the Royal Liverpool Hospital earlier this month. She had been suffering with back pains and her GP, suspecting a water infection, sent her to the emergency room at the city centre hospital.

When David Purse joined the Royal Air Force as a young man and was posted to Australia, he had no idea His mission could go on to affect his health and the health of his family for generations to come.

🧵 Born and raised in Aigburth in south Liverpool, David had initially joined the Royal Navy before then getting a commission for the RAF. One of his postings was to a place called Maralinga in South Australia in 1962.

I’m at the Holiday Inn this morning for an extraordinary meeting of the NHS Cheshire and Merseyside board

The only item on the agenda is the future of the Liverpool Women’s Hospital

There are a lot of campaigners and members of the public here
The background to this is here

Maternity services could be moved from Liverpool Women’s Hospital

liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool…

I’ve been covering Liverpool’s homelessness crisis for a while now and I’ve heard so many heartbreaking stories. This week I heard some tales of hope and community amongst the heartache.

A 🧵 that hopefully shows the resilience and kindness of people There are shockingly over 1,000 homeless households now living in emergency accommodation in Liverpool - with 14,000 people on a waiting list for housing, they could all be waiting for a long time

Many of these people are living in hotels and being moved around each week

You wouldn’t really know it from this general election campaign, but there is a huge hidden homelessness crisis in this country, with huge numbers of people stuck in hotels and temporary shelters, desperately hoping for a place to call home.

This week I met some of them 🧵 It is a blisteringly hot day in Liverpool and in the front garden of a large city hotel, a group of women are sitting and talking

We have had another week in which the catastrophic state of this country has been brutally expose and another week that shows this government's only priority is to divide and stir up the culture wars

A frustrating 🧵 Like with most weeks in the United Kingdom at the moment, the past seven days have brought with them some appalling news about the state of the country.

Rishi Sunak is seeking to alienate vulnerable people in an attempt to recover his poor polling ratings

A thread on this week’s announcement 🧵 If his last big electoral gambit was cutting off high speed rail from the North, Sunak’s latest wheeze appears to focus on cutting off vulnerable and unwell people from the support they need to get by

I saw a headline this week which read ‘homeless people should not be arrested because they smell’

How on earth did this even need to be said in the UK in 2024?

Well it’s a response to another cruel government policy 🧵 Why such a remarkable statement even has to be made by politicians tells us a lot about the pernicious and nasty agenda of this government when it comes to the vulnerable

There was some big news this week which should have been top of the news agenda - the fact that it wasn’t and the story that dominated the public space instead tells a worrying story about the priorities of many in this country 🧵 On Wednesday I was chairing an event about the future of the Liverpool City Region - it was a wide ranging discussion with experts in their field

One of those was Professor David Taylor-Robinson, an expert in public health and children’s public health

It’s St Patrick’s Day and I am nap-trapped by a snoozing baby so I’ll use this opportunity to tell a story about a trip to Ireland that turned into an unforgettable family reunion 🇮🇪 🧵 My mum was born in England after her parents emigrated from Ireland. For her birthday in 2018, we arranged a trip over the Irish sea with the aim of tracing some of her family roots.

As if we needed any further proof, this past week has shown us what a total and utter con the government’s so-called ‘Levelling Up’ agenda really is

A little Sunday 🧵 for you It was Maya Angelou who coined the timeless phrase: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
When it comes to Rishi Sunak, this phrase is highly pertinent.

There was a day this past week when it felt like many of Britain's many problems were brought out into the open for all to see.

A 🧵 on a day in the life of a failing state It was a Wednesday and I was on a train, going through some emails. Suddenly a glut came through from the so-called Department of Levelling Up.

Each of these emails on each of these topics opened a window into just how broken this country has become.

After 14 years in power and with an election months away, you might be wondering how the NHS, this nation’s greatest institution has fared under the Conservatives

Here are some staggering numbers to help you form a view 🧵 With the help of @dubasfisher we’ve looked at January of this year in the NHS compared with previous Januarys since the Tories came to power in 2010

As we enter a General Election year, people might be wondering how the country has fared since the Conservatives came to power in 2010

Spoiler alert - it’s not good 🧵 A new report from @CentreforCities has found that people in the UK are, on average £10,000 worse off than before the Tories came to power in 2014

The Post Office scandal is the latest example of how in this country, ordinary people who are unlucky enough to be caught up in tragedy or injustice have the odds massively stacked against them

A 🧵 on why and how this needs to change The scandal, so brilliantly captured by the ITV drama, tells us so much about the way this country works - or more importantly doesn't work - for ordinary people.

While the Conservatives obsess over a cruel immigration policy that will never actually materialise, the NHS once again finds itself in the midst of a brutal winter crisis

A thread on the grim situation facing staff and patients 🧵 As always my examples for this are in Liverpool, Merseyside and the North West but we know these are scenes being replicated across the country as the entire health service finds itself in crisis

As temperatures plummet, the homelessness crisis in Liverpool and other major cities becomes increasingly worrying and dangerous

I spoke to some of those at the sharpest end of this crisis

A difficult🧵 The situation in Liverpool is bleak, with rough sleeper numbers up by 50% in a year - this weekend the city council activated its Severe Weather Emergency Protocol for the first time of the year

It means temperatures are dangerously low for those sleeping rough on the streets

Liverpool is in the grip of a homelessness crisis and hundreds of desperate and vulnerable refugees are finding themselves forced onto the streets

A tough thread on a humanitarian disaster unfolding in this city and many others 👇 I've reported recently on Liverpool's homelessness crisis. It is being fuelled by a range of complex factors including soaring evictions, a lack of housing and a cash-strapped city council. But a big element of this is down to the Home Office and its treatment of refugees.

We have a spiralling homelessness crisis in this country as more and more people find themselves with nowhere to go and local authorities struggle to cope with the pressure

A 🧵 on the perfect storm fuelling this crisis I report on Liverpool so will be using the city for my example in this thread, but this situation is playing out right across the country

We were warned what Rishi Sunak would be like as a Prime Minister…

A quick 🧵 on a disastrous year for our unelected PM In July of 2022, when Mr Sunak was in the midst of an increasingly desperate leadership battle with soon-to-be lettuce tribute act Liz Truss, he spoke to an audience of Conservative members in the quaint Kent town of Tunbridge Wells.

It is estimated that the UK has lost around 50% of its public toilets in the past decade as local councils have seen their budgets obliterated

Quick thread on why this is such a problem and what it says about our broken country 🧵 We've all been there.
You're out on a walk in the park or enjoying a visit to the beach and suddenly you start to realise nature is urgently calling. If you are unfortunate enough to be in Britain when this emergency starts to arrive, you know you’ve got a problem.