Northern Powergrid fixes Isle of Axholme electrical fault
"Engineers were mobilised to investigate, repairs have taken place, and we can confirm this is now complete," they added.
In April, a foodbank in Haxey said it was "deeply frustrated" after power cuts ruined their stocks of chilled food.People living in the area said their lives had become a nightmare and, at some points in the last month, thousands of people saw their supplies cut off on a daily basis.Maggie Wootten, who has lived in West Butterwick for 34 years, said she had resorted to keeping camping lanterns around her house.She added: "They've been happening regularly since Christmas and often in the middle of the night. The last two months have been the worst."We're paying a lot of money for something but we're not getting the service. They (Northern Powergrid) say they have fixed it but I'm just waiting for the next cut."Some residents said they had been offered a £30 payment from Northern Powergrid for the inconvenience caused.Christine Kennedy said she had "lost count" of how many power cuts her household had experienced and was sceptical about the cause of the problems.She added: "We've been told birds and vegetation are to blame but that's difficult to believe. Are they really different here compared to anywhere else?"
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The Guardian
42 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Dreams and nightmares exhibit to open at world's oldest psychiatric hospital
The vivid dream that vanishes on waking but fragments of which remain tantalisingly out of reach all day. Powerful emotions – tears, terror, ecstasy, despair – caused not by real events, but by the brain's activity between sleeping and waking. Dreams and nightmares have long been studied by psychologists. Now they are the subject of a new exhibition featuring several artists that were patients at the world's oldest psychiatric hospital, Bethlem (sometimes known as Bedlam), and its sister institution, the Maudsley hospital. It includes paintings by Charlotte Johnson Wahl, the late mother of Boris Johnson, who spent eight months as a patient at the Maudsley after a breakdown when her four children were aged between two and nine. She created dozens of paintings while there, and held her first exhibition which sold out. 'I couldn't talk about my problems, but I could paint them,' she said later. Rachel Johnson, her daughter, said in an interview earlier this year that her mother's stay at the Maudsley 'gave her relief from domesticity, and time to paint. We always accepted that painting was like oxygen to her. But when she returned to us, we could see she was still very ill.' Two of Johnson Wahl's paintings are included in the exhibition, Between Sleeping and Waking: Hospital Dreams and Visions, which opens at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind in August. The centrepiece of the show is a huge installation, Night Tides, by contemporary artist Kate McDonnell. She uses swathes of bedding woven with disordered words to evoke the restlessness and clashing thoughts of insomnia. According to Caroline Horton, professor of sleep and cognition and director of DrEAMSLab at Bishop Grosseteste university in Lincoln, 'dreaming occurs during sleep, and sleep is essential for all aspects of mental and physical health. Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion 'We all dream each night, even if we don't remember those experiences. This exhibition captures the intrigue of our night-time experiences, both positive and negative, while showcasing their intricate relationship with our mental health.' Among other works featured in the exhibition is London's Overthrow by Jonathan Martin, an arsonist held in the 'criminal lunatic department' of Bethlem hospital from 1829 until his death in 1838. In 2012, the Guardian described it as a 'mad pen-and-ink depiction of the capital's destruction due to godlessness'. In 1828, Martin, who was driven to expose corruption within the church, had delivered warnings to clergy in York, urging them to repent of the 'bottles of wine, and roast beef and plum pudding'. When they failed to respond, he set fire to York minster. At his trial, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. An illustrated poem, 'Epitaph, of my poor Jack, Squirrel', by James Hadfield, one of Bethlem's most notorious patients, who spent 41 years in the hospital, will be on display for the first time. Experiencing delusions about the end of the world, Hadfield became convinced that he must sacrifice himself to save humankind. He decided to engineer a situation where his life would be taken by others – an attempt to kill King George III. He was arrested and his lawyer successfully argued at his trial that he was 'incurably insane', and he was sent to a cell in Bethlem rather than prison. At the hospital, he was allowed pets, including squirrels, and he sold pictures of them to visitors. His autopsy revealed severe brain injuries dating back to his years as a young soldier. The dream diaries of a Maudsley psychiatrist, Edward Hare, will also be on display for the first time. Over half a century, from the 1940s to the 1990s, Hare recorded his impressions on waking of his dreams from the mundane to the fantastical. Colin Gale, director of the Bethlem Museum of the Mind, said the artwork in its collections reflected 'an entire spectrum of dreams identified by sleep researchers'. Between Sleeping and Waking: Hospital Dreams and Visions is at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind in Beckenham, London, from 14 August. Admission is free.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Panda Hybrid Bamboo mattress review: a stylish, supportive hybrid that keeps cool on balmy nights
I fear the Panda Hybrid Bamboo is playing games with me. When I first tried this mattress last year, it was among the firmest of all contenders in my mission to discover the best mattress. It was great-looking, easy to handle, and firm. Several months later, it's great-looking, easy to handle, and … soft? The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. Not quite. But Panda's mattress is a fine example of what happens to memory foam after you've slept on it for a few months. The initially solid sleeping surface adapts to your body, becoming softer and cosier. My tests with weights reassured me that the mattress was still supportive and not sagging, but it definitely wasn't as firm as in those early weeks. Being a hybrid mattress, the Panda Hybrid Bamboo contains springs as well as foam, although I'm not sure you'd know it. Hybrids cover a huge range, and this one's very much at the 'feels like all-foam' end. Here, I'll explain why that makes it ideal for some sleepers – but not quite for me. View at Panda Bedding company Panda London sent me a double size Hybrid Bamboo mattress in autumn 2024. My husband, Alan, and I removed it from its bed-in-a-box wrapping and let it expand fully, then invited our family testing panel to mark out of 10 on firmness and comfort. We also ran lab-style experiments with heat pads, weights and wobbly cups of water to measure sinkage, motion isolation, heat retention and edge support. Alan and I slept on the Panda for a month in winter, then again during the much warmer nights of June. View at Panda The Hybrid Bamboo is the cheaper of the two mattresses made by Panda London. It comes in nine sizes, including 'small double', and costs from £649 (UK single) to £1,050 (EU emperor) via £799 for a UK double. Those prices are roughly mid-range for a bed-in-a-box hybrid, but they're much cheaper than Panda's other mattress, the 'orthopaedic grade' Hybrid Bamboo Pro, which costs from £950 to £1,750 and contains almost twice the number of springs. Like all hybrid mattresses, the Hybrid Bamboo contains pocket springs plus layers of memory foam of various densities. The individually wrapped pocket springs have a barrel-shaped design, which means they offer more pushback where your body needs it, according to Panda. The mattress contains 612 springs in its largest size, somewhat fewer than firmer rivals such as the Origin Hybrid Pro, which has 5,700 springs in a double. Foam layers include an open-cell 'BioCell' layer immediately beneath the surface, then a more dense 'DualFlex' layer further down. The mattress lives up to its name with infusions of bamboo in the fabric cover and open-cell foam. Panda claims this bamboo content is naturally antibacterial, moisture-wicking and deodorising, with the power to 'prevent the natural heat retention of memory foam'. The cream-coloured fabric cover is gorgeous, with a geometric pattern that looks almost art deco. You can unzip and remove the cover for washing in the machine when needed, but it comes off in one whole unit, like a shell. That makes it more tricky to zip back into place than most removable mattress covers. I managed it on my own, eventually. There are six layers in all, adding up to a depth of 25cm. That's a nice medium depth, offering a balance of robustness and easy manoeuvrability, plus a snug fit for standard fitted sheets. Carry handles are hidden away on the underside of the mattress. As with most hybrids, the Panda is one-sided (only one side is designed to be slept on), so you don't have to turn it. However, Panda recommends you rotate it 180 degrees every three to six months to prevent sagging. Panda describes the Hybrid Bamboo as 'medium firm' and gives it 6.5/10 for firmness. When it's newly expanded, it feels significantly firmer than that – but it softens to its advertised tension after being slept on for a few weeks. When my family testing panel rated the Hybrid Bamboo a week after unwrapping, it scored 8/10 for firmness and sank a maximum of 19mm under 7.5kg of weight. Six months later, including two months of being slept on, it scored 6.8/10 and sank 34mm. This is within the expected settlement rate for memory foam. You'll need to take advantage of Panda's 100-night free trial period before deciding whether this mattress is right for you. Type: hybridFirmness: advertised as medium firm, panel initially rated as 8/10, then 6.8/10Depth: 25cmCover: remove to wash at 30CTurn or rotate: rotate every six monthsTrial period: 100 nightsWarranty: 10 yearsOld mattress recycling: freeSustainability credentials: foam is CertiPur approved; polyester content is made from recycled ocean bottles; will recycle old mattress The Panda Hybrid Bamboo was delivered to my door in standard bed-in-a-box manner: it was shrink-wrapped in the factory and then transported in a big cardboard box. Panda's free shipping service promises more than most rivals, including delivery to any room of your choice and the removal of packaging. I opted to have the box left in my hallway. The Hybrid Bamboo took longer than average to expand to full size after unwrapping. Panda says to wait eight hours before lying on it, but I'd add at least two days to that. If you try sleeping on the mattress any sooner, it will feel soft and uneven, and the chemical 'off-gassing' smell is unlikely to help you snooze peacefully. I was too hard on the Panda at first, because it was too hard on me. Along with my family, I found its sleeping surface unforgiving, especially for those of us who are small and sleep on our sides. Six months later, including at least two months of being slept on, the Panda Hybrid Bamboo turned into a much cosier mattress whose growing softness didn't compromise its supportiveness. I'd initially allocated sleep-testing duties to my dad, Don. He's fit as a fiddle at 85 but found the Panda to be 'hard on my joints', so Alan and I stepped in for snoozing. We'd previously found our sleeping sweet spot on the firm Otty Original Hybrid, and welcomed the spongy but robust surface of the Panda Hybrid Bamboo. It felt too firm on the first night, but over the first few weeks of March, it yielded just enough for comfort when we slept on our sides, and we slept very well. Sign up to The Filter Get the best shopping advice from the Filter team straight to your inbox. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. after newsletter promotion As the weeks went by, Alan and I both noticed a distinct softening in the upper foam layer. I didn't mind this at first, because it felt consistent and natural, unlike the slight central sagging I'd noticed in the Simba Hybrid Pro. Our sleeping bodies made dents in the surface overnight, but it puffed back to flatness within a few hours and offered strong pushback when we lay down. The Hybrid Bamboo's motion isolation is excellent, perhaps thanks to its high memory foam content. There's no bounce to this mattress at all, so it does a great job of absorbing the movements of a restless partner – such as my husband and me. Foam can make you overheat at night, since it tends to hold on to the warmth of your sleeping body, but the Panda did well here. It performed above average in my heat-retention tests and felt cosy without making either of us clammy. We tested it in February and June under very different weather conditions, and despite its foamy feel, it didn't overheat us on the hot summer nights. I also like that its cover claims to be hypoallergenic, because on high pollen days (and nights), I need all the help I can get to curb my hay fever. It seems odd now that the Panda's firmness was its biggest initial flaw for my family testing panel. By the end of the two months, it felt too soft for me and my husband to sleep on comfortably, and perfect for my dad. Sorry, Dad, it's going to charity. The softening of the Hybrid Bamboo's upper layers is entirely to be expected, but it's a distinctive quality of memory foam that won't suit everyone. The spongy sensation can feel like you're being hugged by a giant marshmallow, with no room for air to move. I also found myself worrying that I wasn't being supported enough, and that affected my ability to sleep. I disliked the way the edge gave way beneath me when I got in and out of bed. When you sit on the side of the Hybrid Bamboo, it doesn't really support you at all. There's a frame of dense memory foam around the mattress's layers to help maintain its shape, but it just doesn't seem to have the intended effect. Panda's sustainability efforts are generally good. The bamboo it uses in mattresses and other products is grown organically 'without any fertilisers, pesticides or herbicides', and the polyester in its vaguely described 'durability layer' is made from 'recycled ocean bottles'. It also uses 100% biodegradable 'kraft paper' for its boxes, but there's no word on the composition of the metres of thick soft plastic used to shrink-wrap the mattress for delivery. Memory foam, made from high-viscosity polyurethane, is not a green material by any stretch. Panda does its best to limit the environmental impact of its foam, including CertiPur certification and donating bedding to young people transitioning out of homelessness. The company says it designs its mattresses to last many years to prevent them from ending up in landfill. When I asked Panda for more detail on this 'built to last' policy, it told me it randomly selects a few mattresses from its production line every six months for a 'rigorous laboratory durability test' in conditions that mimic the moisture fluctuations of a real bed. 'These stringent trials go far beyond standard industry checks,' Panda's Natalie Cannavo told me. 'They are integral to our quality assurance process and ensure that our 10-year guarantee is backed by evidence.' In keeping with this landfill-avoidance strategy, Panda offers cheaper recycling than its rivals. It also makes its mattresses easier and cheaper to recycle than its rivals. Most mattress companies ask a fair whack to dispose of your mattress responsibly (Origin charges £54, for example), but Panda does it for free if you're buying a mattress. If you're not, the service costs £50. Panda will donate your old mattress to charity if it's too good for recycling. Using this 'Circle of Life Initiative' even gets you 20% off your next Panda purchase. The Panda Hybrid Bamboo is a mid-price, mid-softness hybrid mattress whose cushioned surface provides good pressure relief for side sleepers and anyone who loves a cosy bed. Its springs are much less noticeable than its memory foam, which absorbs motion brilliantly and softens over time. On breathability, though, the Panda performs more like a pocket sprung mattress, so it may be a good choice if balmy nights drive you barmy. View at Panda Jane Hoskyn is a consumer journalist and WFH pioneer with three decades of experience in rearranging bookshelves and 'testing' coffee machines while deadlines loom. Her work has made her a low-key expert in all manner of consumables, from sports watches to solar panels. She would always rather be in the woods
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
As ambulance leaders turn to technology, how will the NHS navigate the ‘Wild West' of AI?
After diagnosing the NHS as 'broken', the government has placed a big bet on tech being the key treatment for its ailing system, promising that it will become the most 'AI-enabled' health system in the world. With services facing a battle over finances, as well as a lack of staff able to meet patients' needs, health leaders have been exploring the use of AI for some time. The evidence is already there for its use in reading patients' scans. But, more broadly, how does the use of AI tools translate into emergency care? Here, ambulance leaders tell The Independent about the realities of using AI in a complex, fast-paced – and potentially dangerous – environment. 'We've got to get it right first time' Guiding drones, traffic light prediction, helping with diagnoses and live language translation – these are just a few of the ways in which AI could be used within the UK's ambulance sector. Graham Norton, digital transformation lead for the Northern Ambulance Alliance, believes that AI will 'absolutely' become an everyday tool for ambulance staff. 'There is absolutely no reason why AI will not be a routine part of the day-to-day activities across the ambulance sector. It should be,' he said. Mr Norton and Mr Johnny Sammut, director of digital services for the Welsh Ambulance Services University NHS Trust, both agree that AI has huge potential to help health workers battling an increasingly challenging environment. But the pair say this comes with a heavy safety warning. 'The reason that we're different [in ambulance services, compared to the rest of the health service] is that this is genuine life and death, and a lot of the time, certainly over the phones, you can't even eyeball the patient. So, it's not to say there isn't a huge enthusiasm [for AI] and huge, huge potential. But we've got to get it right first time,' says Mr Norton. In areas of the NHS such as diagnostic services, AI is being used to read patient scans. But, if a concern is flagged, these readings are usually looked at afterwards by a health professional, creating a safety net. But Mr Norton warned: 'If you're using AI at an emergency care level – I'm talking about 999 and 111 calls, for example – by the nature of what you're trying to do, you don't have the same level of safety net.' Tackling health inequality The Yorkshire Ambulance Service is currently one of a handful of trusts testing out the use of AI within services, with the main focus on testingsafe AI transcribing tools. These are so-called 'ambient AI' which can listen, record and transcribe notes for paramedics on scene or call handlers. Mr Norton said the devices could even be used to translate patients who don't speak English, using a Google Translate-type tool. 'If we can have AI helping us with translation and transcription, we're going to be able to deal with real health inequality. There's a real health inequality for people who don't speak English as a first language,' he said. Meanwhile, in Wales, Mr Sammut said the service was already seeing 'immediate time saving benefits', in terms of reducing admin burden for staff, by using AI. Last month, the trust soft-launched a 111 online virtual agent, similar to an AI chat function, which provides patients with a conversational way to ask about symptoms. In another use, which is quite different, Mr Sammut said there is work to link AI-enabled drones with hazardous area response teams – teams which respond to complex and major emergencies. 'So this provides situational awareness in the sky on particularly complex or dangerous scenes. We've got AI now embedded into technology and those drones will have things like intelligent tracking. They'll be able to pull thermal and non-thermal imaging together and then they're able to survey and track particular areas of a scene using AI. It develops its own situational awareness in the sky.' The service also hopes to develop AI which can assist with predicting ambulance demand. It can also help paramedics in the field, by interpreting echocardiographs (ECGs) for example, or anomalies in a patient's skin. 'The risk of not doing this [using AI] is far greater [than not]. When you think about the NHS, where we are today, the burden that sits on staff and the levels of funding... to not follow through with AI is quite frankly dangerous.' However, in such a high-risk and fast-moving area, the ambulance executive did point out some risks. 'The other thing that I've got in my mind at the minute is: what downstream risk do we create with AI? I'm thinking from a cybersecurity perspective. So one of the very real concerns that I do have with AI is how do we avoid, track and mitigate against AI poisoning. 'AI poisoning is whereby someone will feed one of your AI models a whole heap of fake information and fake data and... you know the price of us getting AI wrong isn't money alone. It's life. So if someone is able to poison those models, that is a very real risk to the public.' News stories over the past two years, including major cybersecurity attacks on the NHS and individual hospitals, show how precarious an area this is. In terms of risk management, Mr Norton also points out that there needs to be a way of quality assessing AI providers. The potential is 'phenomenal', he said, but the service must 'slow down a little bit'. 'You've got to avoid the Wild West here,' he adds.
