Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer’s NHS reform shamed by ‘broken’ nurse’s horror

It’s perishing out – and a glacial igloo inside for thousands of cash-strapped pensioners. Contagious bugs lurk around every corner. We’re going down like flies. The unluckiest will end up in hospital or worse, stuck for hours in a marooned ambulance in a grid-locked forecourt or triaged on a fire-escape. This isn’t shock-horror sensation – it’s a seasonal norm and the scenario plays out every January. Understaffed and with 13,000 beds filled by patients who would flourish at home if our social care system worked, hospitals are buckling under the strain.

This year’s “I’d split my sides laughing if the consequences weren’t so devastating” excuse, from one manager, was that it is “unacceptably awful”.

What? Unacceptable to whom? Since when have the seasons conformed to an acceptability directive? Clearly what’s unacceptable is the fact the Labour Party has had 13 years in opposition bowed and on its knees but has failed to come up with a viable resuscitation plan.

We are told that the review into the care crisis at the NHS will be revealed in all its glory in 2028.

Scant succour to those unwell folk stricken by the “quad-demic” of , flu, norovirus and the ghastly chest infection RSV. These poor patients struggling for breath, their teeth chattering, delirious and unable to keep down food or water need swift admission to hospitals, clean comfortable beds and drips to keep their fluid levels up, temperatures and infections down.

I know this. You know this. Anyone over the age of seven does. So why is it beyond the wit and wisdom of health secretary and to make damn sure they get what they desperately need?

An A&E nursing sister who had just finished a 12-hour shift rang my LBC show yesterday. She described herself as “broken’” and told us about an 89-year-old man, chronically sick with flu, who had been sitting on a hard wooden chair in casualty for 20 hours waiting to be seen. He told her he had served in the Second World War.

It took her six hours to find this gentleman a bed. She was exhausted, dispirited and dreading her next shift. As a little girl she dreamt of being a nurse. It was her vocation. Through sobs, she said she never dreamed that it would turn out like this.

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Am I stupidly sentimental to believe that engagement and wedding rings should be for life – or at least until the union ends in the divorce courts?

Apparently I am, for as their profiles and earnings increase, celebrities are now trading their original rings in for flashier, pricier models.

Posh and Becks have done it several times, and as a Christmas present husband Chris Hughes “upgraded” her £40,000, two-and-a-half carat emerald-cut ring – to my mind rather gorgeous – to a stonking £200,000 rock estimated to be six or seven carat.

It’s a right bobby-dazzler and Mr Hughes has every right to bestow jewels upon his beloved wife whenever he gets the urge. I simply thought there was something unique about the specific ring over which the wedding benediction is said.

Trade in your old jalopy for a convertible and your ropey kitchen units for sleek state-of-the-art newbies,sure. But shouldn’t engagement and wedding rings, however modest and humble, remain forever on the third finger of the left hand to remind the bride and groom of their commitment to one another, “for richer, for poorer”?

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Donald said Nigel and Elon were terrific. Elon said he loved Donald and Nigel. Nigel was ecstatic. Nigel said he didn’t like Tommy and Elon said Nigel couldn’t play in his sandpit.

As my grandma Sybil would have said, “For pity’s sake, why doesn’t someone bang their heads together?” And she’d have been right. Why don’t these supposedly eminent men realise they are behaving like fractious infants?

My five-year-old grandson AJ would be embarrassed to conduct himself with such clunking immaturity.

Gentlemen – that might be overly generous – please control yourselves. Think before you tweet. Weigh up the impact of what you say before it’s said – it’s called being a grown-up. And in doing so, you will spare the rest of us all the daft rumblings and ramifications each time you bleat your incendiary nonsense. Go on, give it a try please.

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I’m writing this on , the first Monday of the New Year. We get it. Being incarcerated with your nearest and dearest for two weeks of compulsory joy without the usual routine of work and play to break up the monotony puts every marriage under the microscope.

Couples conclude they can’t abide one another or the prospect of another Christmas in each other’s company. Lawyers brace themselves for an onslaught of distraught spouses determined that divorce is the best and only solution to their woes.

A quarter of a century after my own let me advise you to hit “pause” and New research says divorce deducts two years and four months from your life. Don’t think that because divorce is common, it isn’t very painful, expensive and destructive. Fast-forward to your children’s weddings and the births of your grandchildren. Wouldn’t it be easier and jollier to celebrate these celestial moments arm in arm with their co-creator?

Step-parents can be wonderful but cementing blended families is difficult and sharing your children’s triumphs (and disasters) with the person you once loved enough to marry must be simpler and more precious. Before you call time consider the long-term loss for all. Cancel the solicitor’s appointment and book a course of counselling instead.

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The Director General Tim Davie has charged licence-fee payers for 30 nights at an unidentified despite living a mere hour’s drive from Broadcasting House in Henley-on-Thames.

Hang on! Is this the same that stopped allowing horrible plain biscuits to be ordered for meetings because it wasn’t fair to bill licence-fee payers? The same that stopped transport for guests to and from appearances and shaved so much off their fees it was no longer worth appearing for many?

My last stint there was just shy of 20 years – presenting Early Breakfast on Radio 2 and Breakfast on Radio London.

Just once in that time I stayed in a hotel because the forecast snowfall made the drive a daunting prospect. My drive had pipped the gritters to the post and the roads were an ice rink and as scary as hell. But it never occurred to me to ask Auntie to pay. I’d chosen to stay – so I coughed up.

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Should I be insulted by the cascade of direct messages imploring me to sign up to a stint on ’s reality TV show What are these persuasive strangers implying? Could they be suggesting that I am wily, sneaky, a saboteuse and bare-faced liar?

I’m deeply affronted as honesty is my middle name (it’s not, really, it’s Jane). So let me clarify. Even if I were to rate my own powers of ruthlessness that highly, I still wouldn’t have the chance to “sign up” to Celebrity Traitors. You have to wait to be asked. Shame, or lucky escape? You decide.