4 hours Ago By Richard Madeley
Many years ago when I was a local newspaper reporter, I took a story to my editor. “My police contact says an ambulance paramedic was assaulted last night by someone they were taking to hospital.” “Nonsense,” was his reply.
“No one attacks ambulance crews, least of all the patient. Never heard of such a thing. Go back and check your source, Richard.
” The story was true and so extraordinarily unusual – this was 1974 – that it made the front page of our little weekly paper for the following two editions. Times have changed. An investigation by colleagues at my other day job, Good Morning Britain, this week established that assaults on ambulance crews have increased by a shocking 15 per cent.
That means that by midnight tonight, around 60 paramedics in the UK will have been attacked, at a rate of roughly three per HOUR. Almost 22,500 cases every year. Not headline news any longer.
It’s the new normal. This is what we’ve become. This week I interviewed two ambulance crew members who’ve recently been attacked.
Charlotte Miller had only been in the job for a year when a man she was attending to in the back of her ambulance suddenly assaulted her, sexually, and repeatedly, despite her valiant attempts to fight him off. She managed to call the police and her attacker was arrested and charged (he would later be jailed for nine months. Out in four, of course).
Despite her shock and distress, Charlotte was back on duty two hours later. Such courage. Such dedication.
Gary Watson had just helped a drunk and disorientated man into the back of his ambulance and was trying to settle him when his “patient” suddenly and without warning lashed out at Gary and his colleague. The resulting violent struggle lasted almost 10 minutes before police arrived. Gary was off work for three months with facial, throat and ligament injuries.
He too returned to his duties as soon as he was able. His attacker received a suspended prison term. This won’t do.
Exemplary, harsh sentences are required for anyone assaulting our brave and dedicated ambulance crews. They’re healers. They can’t properly defend themselves.
We must do it for them. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ My first car was a Harry Potter special. A sky-blue Ford Anglia, just like the one the wizard used.
It could fly, too – well, it did the night I lost control on a dark country bend and hurtled into space before crash-landing back onto the roof. Miraculously, both my girlfriend and my teenage self were unscathed and a farmer and his son, startled from their beds by the racket, helped us push the car upright again. Still driveable, we crawled home in it, deeply chastened.
It was my first and last accident (at least, one that was my fault). I sold the car a year or two later for a couple of hundred quid. Perhaps I should have held on to it.
Because this week the humble Ford Anglia 105E emerged as one of the more sought-after rare breeds – largely thanks to a movie connection. It’s right up there in the same bracket as Sixties supercar Aston Martin DB5 and Seventies icon the Lotus Esprit – both James Bond picks. Meanwhile the DeLorean DMC-12 – Doc Brown’s gull-winged time machine in Back To The Future – is down to the last 300 still to be seen on UK roads.
A good one can fetch £80k at auction. If only I’d known my humble Anglia was destined for film stardom. I’d have kept it and given it its own dressing room.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Reform UK is now predicted to be the largest party at a general election. A super poll this week showed Nigel Farage taking an astonishing 150 seats from Labour, crossing the finishing line ahead of Sir Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch with 180 MPs. Labour and the Conservatives would be tied on 165, and no fewer than nine cabinet ministers would be defenestrated.
Yes, all right, I know it’s “just a poll”. I’m old enough to remember the so-called Gang of Four, the breakaway group of Labour politicians who founded the Social Democratic Party in 1981, among them the handsome, glamorous Dr David “Robert Redford” Owen. For a brief period it really looked as if the SDP would upset the apple-cart of British politics – but they faded as fast as apple blossom in the spring.
Today feels a bit different, though. Farage claims to have “real momentum”, and I sense he does. The local elections next week will be a crucial litmus test of that, but with the Tory party a shadow of its former self, and a splintered Labour held together with not much more than string and chewing gum, there’s all to play for.
And whatever else Farage is, he’s a player..
