(As told to Francois Truffaut by Alfred Hitchcock)

There was a movie writer who always seemed to have his best ideas in the middle of the night, and when he woke up in the morning, he never remembered them. So one day the man had a brilliant idea. He said to himself, "I'll put a paper and pencil beside my bed, and when I get the idea, I'll write it down." So he went to bed and, sure enough, in the middle of the night he awoke with a terrific idea. He wrote it down and went back to sleep. When he awoke the next morning, he'd forgotten the whole thing, but all of a sudden, as he was shaving, he thought to himself, "Oh God, I had a terrific idea again last night, and now I've forgotten it. But wait, I had my paper and pencil; that's right, I wrote it down!" So he rushed into the bedroom and picked up the note and read what he'd written: "Boy meets girl!"

Dear Lynne Featherstone,

I wrote to you recently about the Health and Social Care Bill. Your reply was, frankly, unsatisfactory: it didn't read as if it was written by you, and to be honest I don't believe it was. This time, I would appreciate it if you would show a constituent - one whose vote helped elect you as an MP - the respect of a proper reply.

There is now an almost deafening call across the country for Mr Lansley's appalling bill to be stopped before it becomes law, with disastrous consequences for the future of healthcare in this country. At the weekend, your party added their voices to that call. To vote for the bill this week would be to disregard not just them, but the majority of the public, every medical Royal College (yes, including the RCS, who believe the bill will damage the NHS), the BMA, the UK Faculty of Public Health, the British Geriatric Society, and even many of the GPs and CCGs who were originally cheerleaders for the bill. It is that bad. The only supporters the bill has left outside Parliament are private health providers. Now, why would that be?

The repeated claims that the Liberal Democrats have removed competition from the heart of the bill have been shown to be false. The bill remains what it was written to be: a mandate for the commercialisation of the NHS. Nothing of substance has changed. If it is passed, fragmentation and competition will replace integration and co-operation in healthcare. Patient care will suffer, inequality will increase and bureaucracy will rise greatly. The results will be felt for years to come; future generations will look back at this as a huge betrayal of one of our country's greatest - and most successful - institutions. 

I am writing to ask you to withdraw your support for the bill, as your party did at the weekend. If this bill fails, the problems of the NHS can be addressed properly and with due consultation. If it passes, the entire medical profession will be left to deal with a terrible mess they do not want - at a time of huge cuts in budgets - while commercial interests move in to maximise profits with ruthless efficiency, as they have been lobbying for for years. There will be no chance to turn back the clock.

Please, do the right thing. Do not let our NHS become a victim of party politics. 

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Leys

I'll post the reply if and when I receive one.

Write to your MP here: http://www.writetothem.com/

Here’s an unbelievable thing. The Health and Social Care Bill 2011 - a piece of legislation that no-one wants - is about to enter the statute books. The medical profession are almost entirely against it. Everyone – even its few supporters – agrees it will have a negative impact on patient care, it will damage the nation’s health, widen inequality and mean fewer services are available to patients on the NHS. 

It will mean people will die. It’s as simple as that.

But because David Cameron doesn’t want to appear weak, it will be pushed through parliament and become law. It will effectively mean be the end of the NHS – the thing most British people regard as our greatest achievement since the Second World War – and there will be no going back.

And no-one wants it.

It won’t fix the ‘problems’ it was supposedly designed to fix: bureaucracy will go up, a lot. Costs will go up, a lot. Services will be fragmented, private patients will be prioritised, the poor and vulnerable will lose out. You will almost certainly need private health insurance, if you can afford it, within a few years. That is what is coming.

And no-one wants it.

It is a grotesque monster of a bill. 400 pages long, with over 1000 amendments, it is a mess of compromises, half-promises and out-and-out deceit. The LibDems claim the amendments they have made – amendments agreed in advance with their Tory coalition partners – have taken the sting out of its tail, reduced its competitive element.

But they are lying. It hasn’t. They want their party members to believe this, to save their political skins. But they know it isn’t true. The heart of the bill still beats: privatisation and competition.

Competition doesn’t work in healthcare: co-operation does. Fragmentation doesn’t work: integration does. That’s how the NHS functions; the principle at its core. It’s why it is regarded across the world as the best. But in Britain today, the NHS is an anomaly, a huge and successful public service in a free-market landscape. Never mind that it works for you and me and everyone else in the UK: it does not generate profit. It’s not how things are done, so it must be changed. It must be ‘opened up’ to competition and privatisation. That is what the Health and Social Care Bill was designed to do – and, despite ‘amendments’, it is what it still does.

And no-one wants it.

No-one except the vultures, the private health firms who have influenced Dept of Health policy for the last 10 years, the firms like McKinsey who effectively drafted this bill. The ones who will line their pockets with our money – your money – for years to come, while waiting lists rise, treatments are refused, fear and anxiety increases.

But here’s’ the other thing: it can be stopped.

We are at the 59^th minute of the 11^th hour – but the bill has not been passed yet. The Liberal Democrats spring conference takes place this weekend, and it is very likely that the membership will force a vote on the NHS. If the party votes to drop the bill, the leadership must accept it. That’s how the LibDems work. And this bill – this privatisation of the NHS, with all its disastrous consequences for the British people – is directly counter to liberal values. Everyone at that conference knows, in their hearts, one simple fact: this bill is wrong. And they should not support it.

The LibDems greatest fear is that they will be wiped out at the polls: that in the local elections this May, they will take a pounding like no party has seen in a generation. Nick Clegg will do all he can to persuade his party that they must stick it out: support the coalition policy programme and – against all their instincts, against everything they entered politics to do – vote to destroy the NHS.

But they don’t have to. We can show them that there’s another way: that if they do the right thing now, if they rescue the NHS from destruction at the last minute, they will regain their credibility, the respect of their voters. If you voted for the LibDems in the past, let them know: you won’t do so again if they support this bill.

Tweet to let them know. Use the hashtags #LostVotes and #LDConf. Tell your followers, and tell them to tell their followers. If every LibDem voter on Twitter whose vote will be lost if this bill passes raises their voice now, the message will be received. They will be watching, they will get the message loud and clear: do the right thing, or you will not be forgiven.

And stop the bill that no-one wants.

#LostVotes   #LDConf

You can also take the pledge here: http://www.pledgebank.com/Lib-Dem-pledge

Dear Lynne Featherstone,

I am writing to you about the Health and Social Care Bill which is currently making its way through the Lords.

This Bill is the single most disastrous piece of policy introduced by any government in my memory. It was rightly described by the BMJ, Nursing Times and the HSJ as an "unholy mess" in last week's joint editorial.

The support which Andrew Lansley claims is there within the medical profession for his Bill does not exist. 98% of GPs, when polled by their Royal College last month, felt it should be stopped. Many other Royal Colleges and public health bodies have joined in that call. The only supporters left for this totally unnecessary piece of muddled and illiberal legislation are those GPs who have already thrown their lot in with the Bill and joined CCGs. Many of them are even of the opinion that "just because they're in the lifeboat, it doesn't mean they want the ship to sink".

Apart from its central policy of undermining the principle of public health in this country, possible forever, there are two things that should trouble you greatly about this Bill.

Firstly, a huge number of the provisions within the Bill are already being put in place across England, without Parliamentary approval. Is this even legal? A vast sum is being spent (as I'm sure you're aware, administrative and bureaucratic costs in healthcare with rise considerably if the Bill is passed) and well-paid positions are being created, all before the Bill has been passed. Your coalition colleagues are now using this possibly-illegal bypassing of Parliament as justification to press ahead with the Bill, it being now "too late to go back". This is spectacularly contemptuous of public, political and medical opinion.

Secondly, Mr Lansley has refused to release the NHS risk register, despite having been ordered by the Information Commissioner to do so. This register is believed to raise serious doubts about the sustainability of the new model of NHS healthcare contained in the Bill. But how are MPs, peers and the public to know, if he will not release it?

I urge you to support early day motion 2659, calling for the release of this register: http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2010-12/2659

As you will see, several of your LibDem colleagues have already signed the motion. If you respect your constituents and the people of England who rely on the NHS, please do so.

I also urge you not to support this disgraceful mess of a Bill in its passage through Parliament. The NHS is an institution deeply loved by the people of this country; it has been shown time and again to be among the most cost-effective and  successful models of healthcare in the world, with the best patient outcomes (see for instance this recent Commonwealth Fund survey: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Surveys/2011/Nov/2011-International-Survey.aspx)

This proposed reorganisation - for which no-one voted - is unnecessary, destructive and will have disastrous consequences for the healthcare of your constituents. I believe it will do great damage to your Party if you continue to support it: I have spoken to many people locally who voted for you at the last election, and we will not do so again if the NHS - our NHS - is effectively sold off to private corporations in this way.

Please do all you can to prevent this unholy mess of a Bill being passed.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Leys

Write to your MP here:

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/

Here's the reply I received by email:

 MP

"The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it"

- Nye Bevan

“No bill is better than a bad one”

- Nick Clegg

The NHS is fighting for its life.

Before the last election, David Cameron promised that there would be “no top-down reorganisation of the NHS”. He did everything he could to make us think the NHS was safe in his hands. Then – not long after the removal vans had pulled away from Downing Street – along came Andrew Lansley’s white paper on the NHS, swiftly followed by the Health and Social Care Bill. It is a top-down reorganisation of the NHS.

In fact, it’s a lot more than that. It will undermine – irreversibly – the central principle of the NHS: that it is free at the point of contact, for everyone, regardless of wealth or status. The Bill’s central idea is to let market forces run our health service – despite the huge amount of evidence that this has a negative effect on results. It will also change the Secretary of State for Health’s role from providing to promoting healthcare. It’s hard to overstate how crucial this change is – at a stroke, it removes the government’s responsibility for the nation’s health. Remember the PIP breast implant scandal? Southern Cross care homes? That’s what deregulation brings. And that’s how the whole of the NHS will be run – competing private companies winning contracts by forcing down costs, and the devil take the hindmost. As Andrew Lansley himself puts it, “the first guiding principle is this: maximise competition”.

Cameron and Lansley aim to give the world’s biggest private health companies what they’ve spent years lobbying for: access to the UK healthcare budget. In other words, to our money. Have a look at this chilling short film.

To do this, the Bill will create a market. Healthcare in the UK will become a battleground for private companies to slog it out for profits – and your local NHS hospital will be obliged, by law, to compete with them. It will also create a two-tier NHS: ‘topping up’ with insurance and personal payments will become the norm – for those who can afford it. Noticed an increase in TV ads for private health recently?

Try and find support for this Bill in the medical profession and you will be looking for a long time. 76% of NHS staff think patient care will suffer. When the Royal College of GPs surveyed their members on the Bill a few weeks ago, 98% were against it. And they’re the ones Lansley reckons will be grateful for this chance to run the NHS. Do you want your GP to spend half their time running the NHS? I doubt it. Neither do they. They know that what ‘GP commissioning’ really means is huge firms of management consultants, like McKinsey, running it for them. And taking another slice of our NHS budget for their trouble.

These are some of the groups that oppose the Bill:

- The British Medical Association

 - The Royal College of GPs

- The Royal College of Nursing

 - The Royal College of Midwives

- The Royal College of Radiologists

 - The Royal College of Psychiatrists

- The NHS Support Federation

 - The Chartered Society of Physiotherapists

- The British Medical Journal

 - Nursing Times

- The Lancet

 - The Health Service Journal

- Unison

 - Unite

And so on – the list is growing daily.

What they all see is that the Bill means the end of the NHS as we know it – the best in the world, available equally for everyone – and that in their desperate rush to ram the Bill through, Cameron and Lansley have created an administrative and financial muddle of gigantic proportions. The BMJ, Nursing Times and HSJ this week ran a damning joint editorial calling it an “unholy mess”. Basically, almost the entire medical profession has tuned its back on Lansley’s ‘reforms’. They see it leading to a disastrous failure in patient care.

But there is one vital group who haven’t made their voices heard. The people who rely on the NHS: the patients. Us.

The most frequently-used phrase to justify the Bill is “patient choice”: the idea that you, the NHS patient, will be offered a range of medical services in your local area from which to choose. It sounds great – choice! For me! Well, I’ll choose the best provider, obviously. Right? Well, amazingly enough, this is one of the many ways in which – despite being over 400 pages long – the Bill is obscure. The chances are that your “choice” will be any provider - so long as it’s the cheapest one your local Commissioning Group has been able to find. Any colour you like, so long as it’s black. In all likelihood, it’s they who will make the choice – not you.

And how will these providers – hospitals, clinics, GP surgeries – make themselves so competitive? In healthcare, there’s only one real way to make profits – by cutting staff. A private company’s primary responsibility is to its shareholders, not its patients. Staff are expensive. But good healthcare needs people: it needs nurses, surgeons, porters, anaesthetists, administrators, cleaners. It needs staff.

The NHS is currently shedding 53,000 jobs. And that’s before it becomes a source of profits for the private sector. Again – remember Southern Cross care homes?

The Coalition also like to claim their reforms will ‘cut bureaucracy’. Hooray! We all hate bureaucrats, don’t we? Down with wasteful bureaucrats! Well, guess what. After Lansley’s ‘reforms’, administrative costs in healthcare are predicted to rise. Massively. Naturally, with competing providers all needing their own admin – which will include accountants, lawyers, managers, all the bureaucracy of a corporation. And a doubling in number of organisations running or regulating the NHS. All paid for by you.

The NHS isn’t perfect. No system on that scale is, ever has been or ever will be. But it is – in terms of results, as well as cost – the best in the world (as this survey by US thinktank the Commonwealth Fund revealed). You may not think that when you’re sitting in a crowded waiting room for an appointment that was meant to happen an hour ago – but would you rather the appointment never happened? Your GP – who under Lansley’s proposed system will be responsible for deciding how the budget is spent – might not refer you at all. Already GP groups are limiting referrals. If you’re the third person with that condition through his door that week, and their ration is two referrals a week – tough shit. Unless you have deep pockets, or your insurer is feeling generous.

When Nye Bevan founded the NHS in 1948, one of its guiding principles was ‘freedom from fear’. Fear of being unable to pay the doctor, a fear that was very real for millions of people. We don’t have to let that fear come back. We can act.

The NHS is ours. And it’s time we – the patients – were heard. It’s time we added our voices to the professional bodies and health workers’ unions who oppose the privatisation of our healthcare – who oppose the fear.

This ePetition was submitted by Dr Kailash Chand, a Derbyshire GP and committed believer in public healthcare. To his and everyone else’s surprise, it was accepted.

Over 44,000 people have signed it already. If it gets over 100,000 signatures, David Cameron will be forced to pay attention to us – the public. Sure, he may try and brush it aside; he may just ignore us and carry on. But he may not. He is terrified that the NHS will become this government’s poll tax – that the Tories will never be trusted on healthcare again. Andrew Lansley’s disastrous Bill is under fire from all sides – except ours. Let’s open up a new front in the battle to save our NHS.

Use the hashtag #ourNHS – raise your voices, share your stories, tweet the link to the petition: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/22670. Send it to everyone you know. Ask them to do the same. Come to the rally on the 7 March.

Above all – make sure our voice, the voice of the patients, is as loud as the voice of the medical professionals. Tell Cameron and Lansley the NHS is ours – and if they take it away from us, they will never be forgiven.

#ourNHS

This FAQ on the Bill is a great resource if you have questions:

http://abetternhs.wordpress.com/faq/

And if you’re looking for an alternative proposal to Lansley’s Bill, this ‘plan B’ by Kieran Walshe is a good place to start:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/01/nhs-reform-plan-b

The following conversation may or may not have taken place this week. It was between Sam Smith, a journalist on the Billericay Gazette, and Nev Wilson, his editor. It went like this.

Sam: “Hey Nev, I’ve been tweeted by a teacher at the Billericay School.”

Nev: “Oh, that’s nice. Let’s see what she says in her twitter feed.”

“Look, she uses an unusual phrase here: ‘blow job’. I wonder what that means?”

“Why not have a look at the context in which she used it?”

“No, I’ve got a better idea – I’ll Google it. Here we go...”

“Oh, my.”

“Goodness gracious me, Nev. Do people actually do that to one another?”

“Well if they do, I certainly had no idea about it. Until that awful teacher mentioned it!”

“She’s corrupting people’s minds! We must stop her!”

“Kill her! Burn the witch! Kill her!”

“KILL HER!”

Alright, the conversation never happened. We know it didn’t, because the teacher, Charlotte Berry, known to her 500-odd Twitter followers as @talktoteens, did not contact the journalist on Twitter. Rather, he contacted her.

It wasn’t hard: The Billericay Gazette know all about her many activities with the school. Because Charlotte Berry isn’t just any teacher. She’s a wellspring of energy, commitment and ideas, the sort of teacher you dream your kids will end up with. She runs a role model project for teenage girls, enabling them to meet inspiring professional women. She started a Historypin project in the school, bringing younger and older people together to share stories of their lives in the area. Even her Twitter name, @talktoteens, tells you something about her: she’s an advocate of communicating with kids, engaging them, not writing them off. How many people do you follow on Twitter whose username contains a good idea?

The Billericay Gazette knew all of this. They knew it because they had covered all of Charlotte’s activities with the school. Charlotte, and the school of which she is assistant head, have given them plenty of good stories over the 12 years she’s taught there. In fact, they illustrated the story they ran about her this week with a photo they took when she and three other teachers ran the London Marathon, raising £10,000 for the NSPCC.

But this week’s story was very different. Here’s the link:

http://www.thisistotalessex.co.uk/Billericay-assistant-head-investigated-swearing/story-13608908-detail/story.html

It was a classic stitch-up, what the tabloids call ‘monstering’ someone. They often do it to celebrities, because they think they’re a bit up themselves, or because they’re a ‘public figure’ who might have done something naughty, like take drugs or go swimming without their top on. Basically, because they sell papers.

In Billericay, they do it to teachers.

I know what’s going on here, you think. Like a lot of people, they simply don’t understand Twitter. They think if you tweet something to one of your followers, it is instantly beamed into the minds of everyone in a 500-mile radius, forcing them to read your words, which are usually about what you had for breakfast.

Not true. The Billericay Gazette is part of Northcliffe Media South East, who know all about how Twitter works:

http://bgbrentwoodtweetup.nmgl.co.uk/it-started-with-a-tweet

The reporter, his editor and the editorial director of Northcliffe South East are all on Twitter and use it regularly. They knew that Charlotte’s tweets were written to individual followers, and wouldn’t be seen by anyone else unless they were following both (although when they ran them in their paper, they removed the ‘@’ names so they look like general tweets, entirely without context).

They knew the ‘inappropriate language’ was jokey banter, between grown-ups, entirely unconnected to the school. They knew that’s what people do on Twitter, they joke and swear and let their hair down. Like this tweet from 17 August, after a football match: “Best moment from last night, the dear old lady 3 rows behind...'bowyer you dirty c@#*!” (in case you’re not sure what c@#* means, it’s ‘cunt’). That tweet wasn’t by @talktoteens, by the way. It was by @SamSmith68, the journalist on the Billericay Gazette.

They also knew, of course, that by publishing Charlotte’s tweets in their paper, they would be bringing them to the attention of a far wider audience. Some of whom might quite enjoy being shocked and outraged that a teacher – a teacher, in a comprehensive school in England – might know words like ‘slut’ and ‘blow job’.

They were right. Check the comments section below the article if you want to know what kind of a monster Charlotte really is, because their readers are happy to share their knowledge and understanding of the matter.

There are two other things the Billericay Gazette probably knew, too. One is that the story would very likely be picked up by the national press, and even the half-hearted  attempts at balance in the original article would be crushed out of existence. Spot on: Charlotte’s story has appeared in the Daily Mail, the Mirror and the Telegraph. Even Richard Littlejohn shares his considerable wisdom on the topic today (“When will these people ever grow up?”).

Charlotte Berry is a grown-up. She realises it was probably a mistake to openly identify herself as an assistant head on her Twitter account (but she was not tweeting in her official capacity and it was not a school account) and her biggest worry is that the reputation of the school has been damaged – a school she loves and has given years to. But now she can’t leave her house. She’s scared of being photographed, doorstepped, monstered further. She’s worried she’ll lose her job, worried she won’t be able to go back to running the projects she’s so proud of. She’s worried about the effect on her family.

And that’s the other thing that the noble pursuers of truth at the Billericay Gazette knew: that when they ran this absolute non-story – when they pruriently took a few well-known swear words out of context, wrapped them in insinuation and outright lies, and brought them to the attention of the easily-shocked up and down the country – they would be ruining someone’s life. Someone who’s not just blameless, but a brilliant example of what a teacher should be.

I don’t know Charlotte. But I did know @talktoteens, through Twitter. When she vanished, I wondered what had happened, and asked one or two people. Friends of hers got in touch, and eventually I found out all of this.

So she swore a few times. Big fucking deal.

[The @talktoteens Twitter account has been closed, understandably, but if you want to send messages of support on Twitter, please use the hashtag #talktoteens and we’ll try to make sure Charlotte sees them.]

My father has one eye.

He lost the other to a rare form of cancer, ocular melanoma, eight years ago. This year, the cancer returned. As there is no cure, he has been taking part in a chemotherapy drug trial. Yesterday, he found out that the drug appears to be working: the cancer is not in remission, but the melanomas have stopped growing. The best news we could possibly have wished for.

But these things are never straightforward. In his remaining eye, he has glaucoma. This means he needs eyedrops daily to prevent losing his sight altogether. There are several glaucoma drugs available, but for various reasons – allergies included – there is only one that he can use. It’s called Trusopt preservative free (it’s the preservatives he’s allergic to, which is not uncommon) and it’s manufactured by MSD, otherwise known as Merck, otherwise known as big pharma. He has eight weeks’ worth on a prescription, and his current box runs out next Monday. His pharmacist can’t get any. His GP can’t get any. His hospital can’t get any. No-one can get hold of a drug which can stop people going blind.

At the suggestion of my uncle Colin – dad’s brother – I turned to Twitter. Twitter went into overdrive, RTing like mad, chasing pharmacies across the country and overseas, sourcing supplies online, offering to pick up and post, coming up with brilliant ideas. I’m struggling to find words to express the gratitude we feel for the efforts people have gone to. All dad could come up with was “amazing, just amazing”. It is society at its finest, its most human and co-operative. And by painting the same picture everywhere, it eventually led us to the truth.

In July this year, pharmacists began to experience a supply problem with preservative-free Trusopt. As their stockists and wholesalers ran out, they couldn’t get any more. Pharmacists up and down the country, it turns out, have prescription patients waiting for supplies of this essential drug. Many of them – and, now, my dad – have been on to MSD to find out what the problem is, and when more will become available. MSD have given the vaguest, most unhelpful of responses: sorry, can’t say when there will be more available – and while you’re at it, “Please do not share this information with others without the authorization MSD.” (sic). He was told on the phone today there is a “shortage” and this will run “through 2012”.

Through 2012. He needs this stuff on Monday.

MSD, it seems, have a contract with the NHS to supply the drug. We’ve been told that part of that contract is a guarantee of supply. That has simply failed. Someone on Twitter told me they’d had a similar experience a while ago – it turned out the manufacturer was diverting all supplies to Europe, where they sell for a higher price. Is that what is happening here?

Some supplies have been located – by Twitter, of course. Pharmacists everywhere have been scouring their back rooms, having had visits and phone calls from an army of tweeters. A box here, half a box there. Scottish pharmacies seem to have stocks (the Scottish NHS is a separate body – perhaps that’s relevant). If there’s any out there, Twitter has found it.

But clearly MSD aren’t too bothered about getting the supply line running again. Or maybe, for some reason, they can’t source the elements they need to make the drug – who knows? They haven’t exactly been transparent. Big pharma, big secrecy. We’re just the people who live or die by the stuff they make. The NHS pays peanuts compared with what they can sell to the private health market for. Let that warning bell sound clear.

Time for plan B. My dad has today spoken to his GP and his consultant. Both have been brilliant, and are working together to come up with a new combination of drugs that may work. That, for now, is the route dad has decided to take. Chasing and worrying about supplies of Trusopt preservative free has understandably left him exhausted, stressed and angry. He’s already receiving chemo, and will probably be doing so for the foreseeable future. But he has already written to the Department of Health and his MP. He’s not the sort of person to let this sort of thing go without a fight (he was one of the founders of CND, and marched to Aldermaston as a young man – one day, Twitter, I’ll buy you all a pint and tell you stories about my wonderful dad). He is an amazing man and I love him hugely. I don’t want him to lose his eyesight. I don’t want anyone who needs this drug to have to face the same situation. And thanks to everyone who helped the search via Twitter, this is no longer a story about isolated individuals – confused, worried, wondering if their drugs will ever appear – it’s about pushing to find out the truth, to stop this happening again.

The story will not end here.

But for now – thank you.

Fifty Thousand

I have absolutely nothing to say about Twitter. Far too much has already been said about it. I like it. That’s all.

When I joined, it was still being referred to as ‘micro-blogging site Twitter’. No-one calls it that anymore. Now it’s just Twitter. I have now been on Twitter for two years, four months and 19 days. In that time I’ve used it 50,000 times. That makes it sounds like valium, or heroin. No comment.

I have made jokes and shouted about politics; I have been caricatured and photographed; I have bitched and whinged about work, or the lack of it; I have casually exploited my dog Sparky for the entertainment of my followers; I have taken hundreds of photographs; I have argued, debated, mocked, been mocked, jeered, been jeered at, made all the mistakes people like me who tweet too much make, been very graphically abused, broken every one of @themanwhofell’s ten rules of Twitter (http://t.co/igPsm7g), cravenly sought approval, made some friends...but mostly just pissed about.

I have never joined a ‘Twitter mob’. I’ve just tweeted what I think about things that are happening, the same as everybody else. Everyone on Twitter is an individual responsible for nothing but their own tweets. Only those made uncomfortable about what’s being said see ‘mobs’. Maybe one day I’ll be on the receiving end of a ‘mob’ and will completely reverse my position. Oh look, I ended up saying something about Twitter.

For my 50,000^th tweet, I’ve listed a few of the reasons I like it. They are all people. In no particular order:

@liz_buckley @vivmondo @The_No_Show @RichNeville @jacques_aih @NickMotown @Gary_Bainbridge @Twistedlilkitty @IanMartin @simonblackwell @kevcecil @AndyRileyish @TheSimonEvans @danielmaier @SimonNRicketts @robdelaney who are among the funniest humans alive.

@_TomMcLaughlin @Clairey11 who might one day be actual colleagues.

@sharonGOONer who is ace.

@DanRebellato @LReb82 who are married and delightful.

@glinner whose fault it is I came here in the first place.

@mooseallain who is the Leonardo da Vinci of Twitter, only funnier and cleverer.

@cornettofairy @c_littlebug @thefagcasanova @DanielNothing @mixmasterfestus who have become actual friends.

@iamamro @tasksonakis who are gentlemen of the first order.

@HeardinLondon who is also a gentleman.

@john_self @loveandgarbage who are literary gentlemen.

@sturdyAlex @LettersOfNote @andromedababe @Shequeen who are my favourite bloggers.

@salihughes @Hemmo who are top birds, and I mean that in an entirely condescending manner.

@Dempster2000 @jackseale who love telly, as do I.

@themanwhofell who is the man who fell asleep.

There are many more because I follow 400 people and not all of them are the Twitter accounts of local newspapers. I’ve probably missed out some of my favourites. @nick_hubert, there’s one. @AnneBillson, there’s another. And @each1teach1, and @antigherkin, and @carrozo, and @Martin_Carr... This could go on. Basically, I follow the best 400 people on Twitter.

One last point. A friend, someone I’ve known incredibly well for 15 years, told me a while ago that the people I communicate with on Twitter aren’t ‘real friends’. They can’t be, he said, because I don’t know them in the real world. I don’t know them, and they don’t know me, and I’m kidding myself if I think there’s anything more to it. There’s no real meaning there, it’s just empty words. End of.

Then earlier this year, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. And I proved my friend wrong.

See you at 100,000.

Lisbon - a few suggestions...

The most famous café is A Brasileira on Rua Garret in Chiado, where if you sit inside with the mirrors and paintings, you’ll pay a quarter what you do to sit outside with the tourists, so do that. It’s really nice.

The old cervejarias like the Trindade (http://www.cervejariatrindade.pt/trindade_english.html) are very handsome so good to stop in for a beer or a bite to eat. (The Trindade is very near the ruins of the Carmo convent, on Largo do Carmo, which are really lovely.)

One of my favourite places is the Casa do Alentejo, just off the Rossio square at Rua das Portas de Santo Antão 58 – a lovely old tiled building; the restaurant isn’t bad (Alentejan red wines are fantastic), but you can just go in for a coffee. http://www.casadoalentejo.pt/flash.html

Along the street from there near the Rossio are a few traditional old ginjinha bars, tiny places open to the street – it’s a sour cherry liqueur, try a shot if you fancy a jolt, it’s bloody potent. Make sure you say yes when they ask if you want the cherry in. Knocks your socks off.

There are loads of good restaurants dotted about: the Bairro Alto is full of them. I’ve found the best guide book to be the Time Out guide, definitely worth picking up a copy. It’s good on restaurants and bars, and (should you require it) clubs – Lisbon is very big on clubbing.

If you take a ferry across the river to Cacilhas, there’s a really nice restaurant on the waterfront called Ponto Final, turn hard right off the ferry and walk along the waterfront (very atmospheric) as far as you can. Lovely views back across the Tagus to Lisbon and fantastic fish.

There’s a terrific café/bar at the Miradouro de Sta Catarina called Noobai – the large roof terrace has great views across the city and the river. Lovely place for a sundowner. It’s near the top of the Bica elevador (funicular) which you have to ride up, one of the great Lisbon experiences. I'm obsessed with funiculars. http://www.noobaicafe.com/

Another ace bar, for cocktails and late nights, is the Pavilhão Chinês in Principe Real (north end of the Bairro Alto). This piece sums it up well: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/reviews/101-star-bars-2-pavilhao-chines-lisbon-440190.html

Best trip out of town is to Belem, either a train ride from Cais do Sodre or one of the modern trams from Praça do Comércio, the main square by the river (or a taxi – Lisbon is still very cheap by European standards). The monastery is really worth a visit, the church is stunning and strange, the cloisters beautiful. And there’s a café nearby legendary from the custard tarts they claim to have invented. They are the most delicious thing on earth. http://www.pasteisdebelem.pt/

The best thing of all is just to walk around. It’s very hilly and fucking tiring, but this is definitely how to really enjoy Lisbon. Loads of old areas – Santa Cruz around the Castelo, the Alfama, Principe Real and the botanical gardens, Estrela – are worth just getting a bit lost in. You’ll soon succumb to the old place’s charms that way (and it’s a very safe city on the whole, but watch out for pickpockets on the buses). And ride on trams, especially the 28 – packed with tourists, but fuck it, has to be done. They're great.

Have fun. Yes, I am jealous.