My husband and I came to Worcester about 26 years ago. We both felt instantly at home. We wanted to find a Georgian house and have the practice next door. So we moved here. We thought Worcester was a pleasant city. It’s got a lovely cathedral, a river and nice surrounding countryside. It wasn’t as forward-looking, or as well developed as the South East of England. It seemed very quiet at first, a bit behind the times, laid-back and sleepy. But in a way that was part of its charm.

It has turned out even better than we expected. It’s a very pleasant place to live and to bring up your children. We’ve been very happy here.

We now have a house in the south of France, as we are going to retire. Like most people, we want to get away from the climate, but also we enjoy Europe, and I think it’s important to have another dimension to your life, to your friends, social life, and culture. We’ll make it our first home if we can. I feel much more in tune, more relaxed and at home with Europe than I do with America. Most of my friends, too, are pro-European.

As far as the Euro goes, I’ve tried hard to understand the implications of it. But there are so many conflicting opinions it’s difficult to form my own. From an everyday person’s view, if it could be arranged that we could have one currency that all of us could see the value of, I think that that would be tremendous. It would save a lot of difficulty for me, from the point of view of money-exchange. I see it as an everyday, practical issue, which I would like to see resolved. But we’ll have to leave it to the experts.

Having the Queen’s head on a coin doesn’t either benefit me or not benefit me. I don’t have a strong view about it. It’s not critically important. And it’s a very different thing from saying whether you want a monarchy or not.

We’ve sort of got used to the monarchy. Besides, what are you going to replace it with? The monarchy has tried hard to reform itself and to reduce its expenditure, its complexity and its hangers-on. I have a great deal of respect for the Queen. She endeavours to do a good job and I respect her for that. She’s a very hard-working woman, who doesn’t have any nonsense, and I think the people who are associated with her know exactly where they stand.

Still, the Queen has to be guided by her politicians. If she stood up and played a more vocal part, she would stop becoming a figurehead and start getting mixed up with political decisions. That would be bad for the role of monarchy.

The good fight – supermarkets or foxes?

As I understand it, Scotland is very keen to have its own independent political system, and the parliament hasn’t caused me any serious difficulty. But if they were to be totally independent from England, they’d find it very hard, because there are so many ties - political, historical, cultural ties.

With Ireland, the present government is doing as well as can be expected. I don’t like to see continual conflict, and I find the terrible events that happened in Ireland very upsetting. I feel a lot more strongly about this than about Scotland.

But Britain isn’t what it used to be. It’s changing and will continue to change dramatically. Ireland is an island, physically separated from Britain, and I can’t see why they can’t be independent and do what they want to do. Provided they aren’t massacring each other within Ireland, why can’t we trade with them, visit them, have them come here, swap ideas?

As for England, our only link with Westminster is through our MPs. There’s a particular issue here at the moment, very important for local people, about a supermarket development. We have a small pressure group, and we approached our local MP. I am on a committee, and we all wrote to him at Westminster. But he doesn’t want to get involved. He said that he wasn’t in the position to form an opinion. His main issue is the bill he has put forward to end fox-hunting, and I assume he is quite busy with that. We are very disturbed because one supermarket wants to replace a sports centre and its traffic will ruin the area. This is the one I’m most concerned about. Another wants the site a local school is on, and has offered to build a completely new school further out. And while they are desperately short of money and need a new school, if the scheme gets the go-ahead, future generations of children will have to be driven to school across the motorway, instead of walking to it as they do now.

There’s been a tremendous amount in the press about fox-hunting but I don’t think it’s a seriously important local issue. Not like the supermarkets. I don’t like to see animals unnecessarily upset and aggravated. They allow people to shoot birds. I mean, to shoot a bird in flight, as sport, is absolutely abhorrent. But there is no discussion about that, at the moment it’s all about fox-hunting. It’s not something I would protest over.

Of course, if people feel strongly about something they should be allowed to protest peacefully. I don’t mean causing aggravation and fisticuffs. But people should have the right to express a view.

And in this respect, the internet is fantastic, though I don’t use it as much as I should. But it’s invaluable for access to information and to get people connected up. I would love it if that’s how things went in the future. With the internet you have world-wide communication very quickly, which is tremendous.

It’s different with the media. You expect opinions to vary, but facts often vary, or the way they say something’s happened. Take Mandelson – look at the way he has manipulated the media. And if they manipulate it, how can we tell what’s real? At least with television you see the person’s body language and hear them speak. So however clever they are, they always give things away about themselves.

Tired of the political slanging match

With a politician, first of all we need somebody intelligent. If you’re not intelligent, you’re not going to be able to do your job. Also, someone who can communicate – and I don’t just mean at their own level. Someone who can understand an average person, how they think, and can communicate with them in an effective way without being patronising, who can explain policies in a straightforward way, saying, ‘This is what we are going to do, this is when we are going to do it, and these are the effects that we hope it will have.’ Instead, politicians make these quite tremendous promises, which either don’t happen, or don’t happen in the time-span that people expect. Everyone is disappointed.

What I find so frustrating is that you see Tony Blair going on television and announcing all this extra money in certain things and if you talk to people actually working in these areas, they haven’t seen the money or they can’t see the improvements. It is difficult for the average person to believe what politicians are saying.

It would be great if we could have a medium, whereby we could put our views forward, in a practical way. You can’t ring up 10 Downing Street and say, ‘I don’t think much about that’. It’s quite hard even to get to your local MP. The one instance of contact with him was extremely off-putting. I doubt many people feel welcome at their MP’s surgeries.

That’s why I would be interested to see arguments for a written constitution, especially if they were clear and concise. If something is never presented to you, you don’t have an opportunity to realise if it could be important for you. We don’t get concise, straightforward information about what is going on. I think many people would appreciate it if there were clear rules. Instead, we get our slanging matches and all the rest of it. When Blair comes under a lot of pressure at Prime Minister’s question time with all the bullying and banging of the papers and yelling, it’s just too male-orientated, and pretty childish. I’d like to see a more professional exchange of questions and ideas.

So I would like more guidance from politicians. I’d like them to sort out the waffle and the unimportant from the important. Instead, you get the impression that politicians have decided what issues they’re going to discuss. People are obsessed with the NHS. I know it is an important issue, but I get thoroughly sick of it. I’ve been working in health care all my life, but it’s health, generally, around the world, that is the important issue, not just the NHS in England.

I’m very interested in the care issues for our elderly people and young people – people at risk. Also, issues of homelessness, prison reform and education. These are the areas that mean a lot to me. If the government said that they were interested in getting together with countries in Europe, and pooling resources for better research, this would be seen as a very important investment in the future. But there is no long-term decision-making. And this is what I find so frustrating and disappointing. When one government loses power, the next government comes in and most of what the previous government has set up isn’t built on. It’s almost like deciding to start again.

Penny-pinching and waste

I admired Mrs. Thatcher for her strength and her clarity of purpose, because she seemed to be well established, and she knew where she was going. But she became unattractive and unpleasant. I think that’s why a lot of people didn’t support her any more. Tony Blair came along – young, a breath of fresh air – so everybody felt it was time to have another government. I would like to see this government have another opportunity to build on what they’ve done. Having a different government every five years is a bit of a disaster.

But they have done some really silly things. It was disgraceful the way they gave pensioners an increase of seventy-five pence. I got on the phone to my son and said that I think this is the worst insult I have ever experienced. I mean seriously, why not do nothing? It is one of the things that will always stick in my mind about this government. I got a letter from the pension people that must have cost them fifty pence to write, saying that I was to get a thirty-five pence rise per week. I thought somebody was sending me up. Fortunately, I could laugh, because it doesn’t matter that much to me. But for people who need it, that was terrible.

Another thing that made them look rather silly was this business about taking the yobbos to cash machines and getting the money out for a fine. Whoever advised the government on that must have had their head in a bucket of water. And yet the government has the finest up-and-coming and established advisers in the world, so how did they come up with a harebrained scheme like that?

To take a different case – Worcester’s hospital. It has a very bad reputation nationally. But it’s not government funding, it’s bad management. For example, my mother was sick recently, and in hospital. There was an elderly woman in the same ward who had fallen and broken both her wrists, as elderly people often do. They were tied together so she couldn’t eat. Now the ward had two staff nurses on it, but I watched her lying there, with no-one feeding her. I waited and waited, Finally I went over and fed her myself. The next night exactly the same thing happened, so I fed her again. The third night I made a complaint. It had nothing to do with government funding. It was just seriously bad management and lack of care.

Unfortunately, the government is often pilloried over the health service. They keep putting billions of pounds into it, but the money just is not coming through as normal, everyday care. That disturbs me.

Helping the men grow up

I think family values are critical. I’m very concerned about the breakdown of the family structure. There are a lot of single mothers in Worcester and they look sad. You can tell by the way they push their prams.

But in political terms, single mothers are not a glamorous issue. I’d like to see a lot more women in politics. And I hate the expression ‘Blair’s Babes’. I think it’s demeaning. ‘Blair’s Babes!’ I mean, the most puerile people I notice on the television during Prime Minister’s question time are the men – not the ladies. Unfortunately, with the hours and the life of government, it’s very difficult for a woman to give her full time and attention to her job, and also look after her family. The system could be improved to enable more women to come into politics, which would give us a more balanced view in parliament and government. And speaking as a woman, I would appreciate that tremendously.

I’m not a particular feminist, but I believe in women’s issues, and I don’t like to see women patronised or excluded just because the way things work are geared to a man’s life. Men’s lives are changing, too. There are lots of men who have to help with the children and the home, and they have to be able to do this.

I would have liked to have done a lot more, but I made the choice. I put my family first and I don’t regret it, though it has certainly held me back.

But all these expressions – ‘Worcester Woman,’ ‘Blair’s Babes’ – it’s all a bit demeaning and patronising. And that actually encourages me to speak up. I don’t think you should be stereotyped. Some of those lady politicians are very, very hard working, thoughtful women. To call them ‘Blair’s Babes’ is ridiculous. It sounds like they’re talking about baby Leo, not grown up women.

And how can there be a ‘Worcester Woman’? I understand that it was about being a ‘floating voter’, as the Labour party felt that there were a lot of women who were undecided about where to vote. They particularly wanted the middle-England, middle-class woman.

But why didn’t they go for men as well? Did they think women would be easier to persuade to change their minds politically? Now if it had been about certain values women held, rather than just being a political view, then that might have been interesting…

For instance, my grandfather was a Church of England minister and I was forced to go to church quite a lot when I was a child. And now I think about Christian values a lot, and I go to church sometimes, just to sit quietly and reflect. But so often you get to the church and the door is locked so you can’t get in, which I find very off-putting. And why are the doors locked? Because the young people vandalise the church silver. It’s a vicious circle.

I’d be reluctant to say whether women have different or better values to men, though I do think that some values are more important to us. There are some wonderful, caring fathers about, particularly the younger ones. But I do feel that it’s more important and natural to women to want to keep the family as a unit, to have that reference-point, love and support. There’s much less of that now – people don’t have that support group.

Lifting the veil of power

Everything is changing now. Big companies are getting bigger because they are continually buying up smaller ones. The power and money is awesome. It’s a difficult situation, because it’s hard work running a small business, so the big companies buy up those that are a little behind. Then the big companies start to control things like the local health centre. We have seen this, as we are going to retire and a plc has bought our practice. This concerns me in a way I did not expect.

In all areas, accountability is a very important issue. I value accountability very highly. I would rather that the government was less competent, and yet absolutely accountable – because they can always improve their competence. But if you’re not accountable, then you’re not accountable. And once accountability is gone, it is not going to come back. The problems arise when things become faceless. If I was talking to somebody, I would expect them to be accountable. But today, it’s so difficult to know where you go to get something put right.

I’d be interested if this issue was brought up, but you never hear about it in elections. I have never had the opportunity to discuss these things. All we get are the same old things. It may be at the point where you start to ask, ‘Who are the faces behind the companies?’ I can’t see the point in having a democracy if you haven’t got the guts to stand up and be counted.

At the end of the day, these corporations are made up of people, and sometimes I have found that when you actually get to them, they are never people of any real significance.

They are not charismatic, either. We need some charismatic people who are eloquent. Tony, he’s not a statesman. He has no real charisma or authority. He’s easily influenced. He gets frightened too easily. He takes too many people’s opinions. He doesn’t think, ‘Right, that’s what I’m going to do and I’m sticking with it’. He is for turning, and he does turn. He’s never come across to me as arrogant, but I think he’s weak. He loses his way easily.

The thing is, we are so influenced by what we see, what we hear through the media. And unfortunately the accountability between the media and the public is not there.

We are all attracted to the media. It’s part of our lives. A lot of people live around the television – it’s beautiful, colourful, there’s the sound. You can’t avoid it. Young people are very influenced by it. There are a lot of demands made on them. They have to look beautiful. Girls have to be stick insects. Half of them smoke because they’re so terrified of putting on an ounce of weight, so they smoke so they don’t get fat. Things like this are bad. Young people are pressurised a lot. And I feel this way sometimes, too.

But in the end, it’s the people themselves who change things. The very fact that we are having this discussion today is important for me. People don’t get the opportunity to discuss these issues, do they? And if this can spread, using the internet, then I’m very optimistic. Because we are all the future, every one of us is the future.