Cummings and Goings

Boris Johnson is insisting that Dominic Cummings acted legally in travelling 30 miles to a tourist town during lockdown.

The Prime Minister defended Cummings in saying he had special family considerations.

Labour's Shadow Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, Sarah Jones, pointed to the fact that single mums do not feel the need in the main to break these lockdown rules.

Dominic Cummings seems like Peter Mandelson able to keep a grip on power, despite countless transgressions.

He is possibly just too useful to Tory HQ, for them to worry about piddling little rules they have set for the whole country...

At the time of writing 108,287 people had signed a Change.org petition calling for his resignation.

Written sourcing the BBC and The Observer.

Mental Health Victories

As it’s mental health awareness week, I want to make you aware of a book I’ve written.

It’s easy to focus on the problems that mental health sufferers experience, but I believe you can focus too much on the illness and not enough on the recovery.

Mental health challenges can be overcome with the right support.

My book focuses on the recovery journeys of a number of past and present mental health sufferers and the achievements that they have made.

Here is a link.

Gareth Emery gig

Gareth Emery is hosting three amazing shows this weekend.

This series of events are replacing Gareth’s Decade tour show, which he had to cancel as a result of the pandemic.

The Decade show is to celebrate the last 10 years of Gareth Emery’s music. 

It’ll be a 2.5 hour set featuring his greatest hits from the last decade.

The show will feature lasers, smoke, multiple cameras – essentially the full production – and will be shot from Gareth’s pool in his back garden.

The three shows across the weekend (the initial broadcast and 2 replays which Gareth plans to join the chat for), each in different time zones, so people from all over the world can tune in and party together.

The first show will be broadcast on Friday 8^th May  at 9PM EST/6PM PST, with the primary target being the US audience. 

A replay for Europe will be shown at 8PM BST/ 9PM CET on Saturday 9^th May, while the replay for Australia/Asia will be on at 6PM AEST (UTC +10) on Sunday 10^th May.

Tickets for the event cost $10 and can be bought through this link 

Buying a ticket will get you access to all three shows.

Enjoy!

We Progress

A short mental health film called We Progress will premiere at 8pm on the 8th of May.

See it here:

Two of the films makers have struggled with mental health challenges themselves, so this film is very close to their hearts.

I hope you will tune in for this great short film project.

Mental Health weekender

Dr. Sarah Jarvis, Dr. Radha Modgil, Dr. Aaron Balick, mental health campaigner Natasha Devon the Pilates PT Hollie Grant, are all among the health and wellbeing professionals have come together for the UK’s first ‘virtual’ wellbeing festival, which has been launched in response to COVID-19, to help people better cope in these extraordinary times.

The Live Life Well Weekender will run from the 8th – 10th May 2020, and will bring together experts, health professionals and industry leaders from across the wellbeing industry, for over 30 events that will explore all areas of wellbeing to spark discussions and provide the practical tools that people desperately need to help protect their own, and their families’ wellbeing now, and as we come out of lockdown.

The Live Life Well Weekender is a not-for-profit event and will be accessible to all with free tickets for all frontline and key workers, free access for students, as well as free tickets for those in need who are on low incomes or unemployed as a result of the pandemic.  

A nominal fee of £10 per household for General Admission provides visitors with access to the whole three-days of content, of which all profits received will go charity to support the NHS Charities National Covid-19 Appeal. 

All contributors are doing this event for free, so if you can afford to pay, please do contribute to the hard-working team behind this virtual event.

You can get tickets for the event here.

NHS Privatisation

Even as we clap the NHS the Tories are making plans to privatise it.

In a worrying new article TruePublica exposes Boris Johnson’s plans to privatise the NHS.

His stay in hospital clearly didn’t convince him of the benefits of a publicly run, publicly funded NHS; I mean they only saved his life.

We clearly need to do more than clap in these dark times.

Write to your MPs, tell them how much a publicly funded health service means to you.

Let’s not slide into the American model, Obama wanted to change it for a reason.