Dislocated to Success Read Online Free PDF

if we didn’t dispose of anything it would probably stand up OK given the circumstances. Of course, it was a minefield; Rachel wasn’t even the next of kin - that was the somewhat gaga aged parent. She took some keepsakes and we split the non-perishable contents of the food cupboards - which seems asinine now, but was very much the thing at the start of the Dislocation.
     
    On the Sunday evening, Willie dropped around to discuss business; he’d had a long journey back from Penrith and was in need of some sustenance, so we went to his club for what was probably the last non-rationed restaurant meal I was to eat without being being on official business for six years. He said what he thought the priorities would be for legislation, and I disagreed with him; there was going to be an immediate need to deal with a number of other issues which we hadn’t mentioned. What to do with foreign visitors, not just in the long term sense but in the short term? The hotels were getting restive, and there were already stories of people being thrown into the street. What to do about perfectly viable businesses which had just been crippled by the loss of their export trade? Willie raised a few others he’d picked up: families where the breadwinner had been out of the country; people with overseas assets; one couple had been to see him about their House in County Kilkenny. One of the very useful things that we picked up from MPs who had been to their constituencies was a pretty clear list of items that politicians and civil servants had not picked up on or regarded as a priority.
     

Chapter 6
     
    The second week actually saw the start of the return of relative normality, at least politically; Cabinet was only scheduled for twice that week, although there were a number of working parties on various issues at the PM’s beck and call. I was finally able to settle down the list of legislation for the near future and agree suitable amounts of debate on the subject. With Silkin supposedly on-side, my main tormentors were Clement Freud [28] , Ted and the grim figure of Enoch. Clement, to be fair, was mainly being playful; his main torment was of the Labour party, several members of which would have wanted to oppose everything just for the principle of it all and felt constrained. Ted was just being a sulky beast, as usual - any excuse to find a way to lambast the PM. Enoch was very concerned with “important constitutional issues” and particularly with Ireland; I had a fiver with Joppers over whether he would at some point refer to “Our rightful Sovereign Frederick Lewis”. I lost, but having seen his memoirs it was a close run thing - only his oath to the Queen as a member of Parliament stopped him.
     
    Whilst the food-related disorder of the previous week had pretty much stopped, as rationing had now fully cut in, there were different problems emerging that affected a number of people. The UK had a drug shortage - both legal and illegal - and this started to be noticed. On the legal side, there were a number of drugs which had only been made abroad and were running out of supply. Norman [29] and Patrick had laboured hard with a group of doctors and scientists to produce a list of things that our pharmaceutical companies needed to start making in a priority order. They were looking at this and coming back with estimates as soon as they possibly could; they had a very high priority for support funds. However, this did not and could not stop people running out of their regular drugs; in many cases they could be placed on other UK made treatments, but in some cases they could not - and this did lead to some very grim stories. The newspapers were not terribly helpful about this, even when you get the head of Glaxo saying “there is no way we can produce this in less than three months” it still isn’t good enough. The Times was particularly unhelpful, running a ludicrous story about how cancer patients were dying because we were making