Movers and Shakers: The Petition Edition
This week we have a short, newsy edition of Movers and Shakers intended to bring listeners up to date with what is happening with our Parliamentary petition. Just to remind you, it calls for the Parky Charter, our manifesto for better Parkinson’s care, to be implemented and we need to get 100,000 signatures by September 10th if we want the chance to have a full debate in the House of Commons.
The episode focuses on two things I have already written about here - our trip to Brighton to promote the petition on a rainy day, and our plan for a competition pitting local Parkinson’s groups against each other in a race to sign up the most people.
As I write this at 8am on Saturday morning on a train heading to Scotland, the petition has just gone through the 44,000 mark. I am on my way to the Borders Book Festival in Melrose and then tomorrow to the Alnmouth Arts Festival. In both cases, I will be talking about Sophie From Romania, my book about our intensely shy and nervous rescue dog but I will also be promoting our petition. Hopefully, some Parkinson’s groups across the UK will be out and about spreading the word on this warm weekend and surely by Sunday evening we can break through the 45,000 level?
If you need inspiration, look to the current number one on the competition leader board, Bexhill. They have got 308 signatures so far, 60 ahead of second-placed Lewes, with West Dorset in third place.
Yesterday I got a reminder of why this matters. I had mentioned on social media that I was having my regular check-up with my neurologist - this happens every nine months or so and is a chance to assess how things are going and adjust my medication. But someone wrote to me assuming that I had gone private - I had not - because their mother-in-law had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s three years ago and had not seen a specialist since. The woman was taking something like a dozen tablets a day and her relatives were rightly concerned that her medication had not been reviewed at any stage and that she had been left completely in the dark at diagnosis about the treatment she could expect from the NHS.
More evidence then that the first two demands in our Parky charter - for more specialists and better information for patients - are absolutely vital if we are going to give people with Parkinson’s the treatment they deserve.
Over the rest of June and July we will have four Parky Profiles, conversations with fascinating people living with Parkinson’s. You will find the first, the novelist. Linda Grant, on your podcast platform of choice on Saturday June 21st.
We are already hard at work on the next series of Movers and Shakers which will begin in September.
I am a little perplexed why it's such hard going to get these 100k signatures, but to help the cause, I have distributed the link to the entire family this weekend. As a family affected by Parkinson, we all have good reason to sign. Thank you for all you do.