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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 3d

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 see them failed them on your watch?

Thank you @channel4news.bsky.social for covering this story.

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 3d

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, @wesstreeting.bsky.social:

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 3d

These cuts were necessary, say the Trust, “in order to maintain core services within a reduced budget” - that is to say, the reduced budget they now receive from this govt.

So this is on Keir Starmer & Wes Streeting. These are their choices - with which patients like Trevor must now live & die.

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 3d

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).

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 3d

The Trust 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.

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 3d

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 hospital instead of the hospice environment they hoped for.

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 3d

This is Trevor Fisher, speaking to @channel4news.bsky.social from Arthur Rank Hospice in Cambridgeshire this week.

As a palliative care specialist, Trevor’s interview has devastated me.

His hospice has just been told Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust is withdrawing £800k of funding. 🧵

photo of a man, Trevor fisher, in his hospice bed this week, filmed by channel 4 news

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 3d

"The people who jostled their way into this lane for a grotesquely outsize cash bonanza and then boasted about helping the nation were profiteering, plain and simple."

Brilliantly & appropriately savage from the peerless Marina Hyde 💥

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Michelle Mone told us ‘business isn’t easy’ during Covid. How are things now, your ladyship? | Marina Hyde

After a company she was linked to was ordered to repay £122m it made from pandemic deals, the baroness has embarked on a masterclass in victimhood, says Guardian columnist Marina Hyde

www.theguardian.com

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 6d

On @lbc.co.uk now - please tune in...

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 6d

Here I am in 2020 in the flimsiest, most pitful PPE - like so many other NHS staff, some of whom died from the Covid they caught in their hospitals.

Tory peer Michelle Mone - who today lost her legal case & must repay the govt £122m - dares to claim she’s been ‘scapegoated’.

What, Michelle? 🧵

Rachel wearing very flimsy looking apron, mask and visor in NHS setting

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Reposted by Dr Rachel Clarke

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 8d

Is there a reason I ask that the Times are using a picture of asylum seekers in a boat to describe rules for migrants who came on legal routes such as skilled worker visas for doctors?

The Times & Sunday Times @thetimes.com · 8d

Tough new conditions to be imposed on migrants who want to settle in the UK will not apply to more than a million people who arrived in the UK under the post-Brexit immigration surge

Labour’s tough new rules will not apply to migrants already in UK

www.thetimes.com

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Reposted by Dr Rachel Clarke

Gaia Vince @wanderinggaia.bsky.social · 6d

This must never be allowed to happen again, for there will be other disasters (increasingly) and other greedy unscrupulous people will try to take advantage of the professionalism and generosity of public health workers

Enraging thread 👇

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 6d

Here I am in 2020 in the flimsiest, most pitful PPE - like so many other NHS staff, some of whom died from the Covid they caught in their hospitals.

Tory peer Michelle Mone - who today lost her legal case & must repay the govt £122m - dares to claim she’s been ‘scapegoated’.

What, Michelle? 🧵

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Reposted by Dr Rachel Clarke

Alan @gammacounter.bsky.social · 6d

“As thousands of companies bid for contracts to fill the UK’s depleted PPE stockpile, Boris Johnson’s ‘VIP lane’ gave high priority to people with political connections.” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 6d

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cy...

Firm linked to Baroness Michelle Mone must pay £122m after breaching Covid PPE contract, judge rules

The government wins its case against PPE Medpro - part of a consortium led by Baroness Mone's husband - after it supplied non-compliant gowns in 2020.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 6d

Michelle Mone is the polar opposite of the values that should govern public life.

She should repay what she owes immediately & get her sorry, dishonourable form as far away from the House of Lords as possible.

She, & all those other govt grifters who tried to monetise a pandemic, sicken me. Ends/

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 6d

I was given masks whose ear loops fell off & aprons so flimsy they ripped apart when you tried to put them on, Michelle.

Nurses and porters in our hospital died from the Covid they caught there, Michelle.

How dare you try to bleat victimisation now, Michelle?

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 6d

For caring more about lining your own pockets than the deaths of NHS staff & patients?

For being disgustingly cynical & avaricious - in the sharpest of contrasts to all those millions of ordinary, decent Britons across the country who stepped up with such courage & decency?

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 6d

For receiving £122 million of govt funds for unusable PPE – at least £65 million of which went straight into your venal husband’s offshore accounts in the Isle of Man?

For being one of a small minority of corrupt grifters who saw a global pandemic as nothing more than a chance to get rich quick?

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 6d

Here I am in 2020 in the flimsiest, most pitful PPE - like so many other NHS staff, some of whom died from the Covid they caught in their hospitals.

Tory peer Michelle Mone - who today lost her legal case & must repay the govt £122m - dares to claim she’s been ‘scapegoated’.

What, Michelle? 🧵

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Reposted by Dr Rachel Clarke

Dr Louella Vaughan @drlkvaughan.bsky.social · 9d

The RCP is asking Fellows to vote on key constitutional reforms, including extending the franchise.

A group of 27 Fellows tabled a motion saying reform should be slowed down + done properly.

Not enough information. Too many questions.

Our views here:

tinyurl.com/ye5k2fa2

RCP Constitutional Reforms - The Case for No (Not Yet)

The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) is currently asking Fellows to vote on constitutional reforms. The reforms seem relatively straightforward – widening the franchise to allow Collegiate members to...

tinyurl.com

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Reposted by Dr Rachel Clarke

Tarik Abou-Chadi @tabouchadi.bsky.social · 12d

The success of the far right is not only measured in votes and seats but in its impact on rhetoric, policy and ideology. The fact that a (nominally) social democratic head of government with a huge majority choses to say and do this is maybe the biggest success of the far right in Europe yet.

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 13d

When the likes of Trump & Farage try to trash scientific method - insinuating that drugs are dangerous when they're not, and that scientists are charlatans - remember this story, and countless others like it.

We are so incredibly lucky to have modern medical science.

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 13d

Superb news showcasing the wonder of medical science.

Huntingdon's is a brutal terminal disease.

This new gene therapy slows the disease's advance by 75%.

One medically retired patient has now returned to work.

Others, expected to need wheelchairs, are walking.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Huntington's disease successfully treated for first time

One of the most devastating diseases finally has a treatment that can slow its progression and transform lives, tearful doctors tell BBC.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 13d

Listening to #Mammy en route to work at the moment and it is absolutely superb - only danger is laughing/crying too much to drive occasionally. Such a glorious, life-affirming book, Seamus 💚

The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · Nov 13

So you feel like buying my excellent and award-winning memoir, Did Ye Hear Mammy Died but aren't sure if it's as good as I keep saying. So here's a few pieces from - and about - the book, which might entice you to buy a copy right now from mammybook.com

Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?

Pre-order now:

mammybook.com

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 13d

This enabled our patient to go home that same morning, just in time.

It was palliative care at its best - resolute, collegiate, focused entirely on what mattered to the patient.

In the most profound sense, we only die once.

Here's to care, humanity and creativity at the bedside ❤️🐕

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Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 13d

He had two dying wishes: to be reunited with the dog he loved & to end his days at home, surrounded by the love of his family.

Cookie, of course, was rushed to the hospital stat 😊.
Then multiple teams moved heaven & earth to get oxygen, meds, carers, equipment & logistics in place at home. (2/3)

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