THE ULTIMATE
On January 3rd 1883, British Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee was born.
Attlee became the first majority Labour Party Prime Minister in 1945, and during his period in office created the Welfare State - of which the NHS is a crucial part still to this day, enabling people to get free healthcare at the point of use, paid for by those in work through taxation. The Welfare State that Attlee's government created, brought into being the report made by Liberal politician Beveridge during the Second World War, that called for the tackling of 'Five Giants' - Squalor (poor housing); Idleness (unemployment); Disease; Ignorance (lack of education) and Want (Poverty). Attlee's government also pursued an economic policy of state involvement in the economy, known as Keynesianism. Around a fifth of the British economy was nationalised, brought under government control - including coal, railways, gas, electricity, steel and the Bank of England. Having served with Winston Chuchill in the wartime Coalition government, Attlee campaigned for the creation of a Welfare State, and a 'Land Fit For Heroes' in the 1945 General Election to reward the British People for their sacrifices during the war. Attlee defeated the Conservative war winning Prime Minister, Churchill, in the election as the population moved on from war to what they felt was needed in peacetime.
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On this day, May 12th 1820, Florence Nightingale was born in, Italy in the city of her name.
Florence became a pioneer of nursing and healthcare statistics, and gained celebrity status in Victorian as the 'Lady with the Lamp'. Against her family's wishes she trained to be a nurse in Germany, comleting her training in 1851. On reading of the casualties in the Crimean War 1854-56, she responds to a government call for nurses, and is given the headship of British female nurses in the East. She travelled from England to Constantinople, now Istanbul, and joined the hospital at Scutari, with her team of female nurses. However, their presence is unwanted by the male nurses already there. The conditions in the hospital were so bad and rat-infested that she realises that the soldiers are dying from the conditions rather than their wounds. When the female nurses were eventually allowed to care for the soldiers, Florence directed her team to improve the hygiene of the hospital. It was at this point that the Times newspaper ran a report of her checking on the soldiers in the night with her lamp, leading to her fame throughout Victorian Britain as the 'Lady with the Lamp'. She insisted on visiting the field hospitals to see the conditions there, where at the Balaklava hospital she was struck down with 'Crimean Fever'. During her time at Scutari, she developed the use of statistics to study the impact of the hospital's care, and to work out the health issues the hospital faced. Her devlopment of such statistics, and use of statistical diagrams, gave her the evidence to campaign for resources and aid from the government, as well as earning her membership of the Royal Statistical Society, the first female member. Back in Britain she continued to campaignfor the improvement of conditions in hospitals, establishing her own training school at St. Thomas' Hospital in London. The nurses who graduated from her training, then took her ideals and evidence based approach to sanitation across the country. Queen Victoria sent her a jewelled brooch designed by her husband Prince Albert. And Florence was made the first woman member of the Order of Merit, a group of 24 individuals and the Monarch. Florence Nightingale made nursing a respectable career, that was professionalised by training and she also pioneered the use of statistics in healthcare. On this day, May 9th 1860, Scottish author J.M. Barrie was born in Kirriemuir, Angus.
J.M. Barrie is most famous for creating Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up, who could fly and lived in Never Never Land, whilst living in London. Barrie devised the character on trips to Kensington Gardens, where he regaled the children of a family he befriended with Peter Pan's exploits. You can see the statue Barrie commissioned of Peter Pan, in Kensington Gardens near the west bank of the Long Water at the spot where he landed his bird's nest boat in Barrie's book 'The Little White Bird'. The statue hs been a favourite in Kensington Gardens since 1912. In his will Barrie gave the copyright to his Peter Pan books, and character, to Great Ormond Street Hospital, the famous children's hospital in London. A right that in 1988 was set into law by a House of Lords amendment to the UK Copyright Act, that means Great Ormond Street Hospital will always have this copyright. Find out more about this special connection via: https://www.gosh.org/about-us/peter-pan/history Find out more about his birthplace in Scotland at: https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/j-m-barries-birthplace Banksy's latest artwork has been gifted to Suthampton General Hospital, and portrays the latest Superhero - a nurse!
The painting shows a boy playing with his toys, the old superheroes Batman and Spiderman have been discarded, as the boy plays with a nurse doll, as a child would a plane. The nurse is a caped crusader, wearing a female nurse's outfit, emblazoned with a red cross, wearing a face mask and in the superhero flight pose of Superman. The message is unmistakable, the nurses, the NHS, are the new superhero on the block in the era of coronavius, Covid-19. see more on the BBC at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52556544 |
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