The Griper's Times

ONE in nine people are currently waiting for treatment on the NHS - that's something like 7.5 million people nationwide. Patients driven to desperation by waiting times have reportedly reached the point of trying to crowdfund private treatment. BBC investigations show others are resorting to loans in order to avoid the logjam facing our health service. With ambulance trusts nationwide having declared black alerts - meaning even heart attack sufferers could wait hours for paramedics - and concerns over an "alarming collapse" in the quality of GP services, it's hard to overstate pressures. Don't take my word for it - Rishi Sunak - the man who until weeks ago was in charge of the nation's purse strings has now said emergency action is needed. Ministers will almost certainly point to the pandemic as having poleaxed services and of course the greatest public health crisis of modern times cannot have failed to have had an impact. One may question of course whether ...

A CGI recreation of the manor/ Wessex Archaeology SOMETIMES you get the very best view at ground level, if not three or four metres beneath it... It's a summery Sunday morning and I'm stood in a muddy trench where centuries of soil have been stripped back to expose what remains of the ancient building. Hundreds of years ago the curve in the river near Coleshill had been chosen as the site for an ambitious Elizabethan estate. And generations later, after the walls had fallen in and fields had enveloped the ruins, the same spot found itself slap-bang in the centre of the HS2 rail route. This already feels like disputed turf - a crossing place between the old and new. Turn one way and you can see the imposing spire of the Medieval church, while on another horizon stand the tower blocks of not so distant North Solihull. But the looming arrival of tracks and pylons and 200mph trains means an urgent need to catalogue the site before it is swallowed by development. Surveys started wit...