13/02/2012 Inside Out North East and Cumbria

Tonight - in sickness and in health - parted after a lifetime by a stay

in hospital that went terribly wrong.

I can see her every day and I know that she's comfortable and that's

consolation, but it doesn't bring her back home.

We take a Valentine's day trip to the cinema and a love affair with

Tyneside's silver screen. He was just entranced by the magic

of the cinema and the pleasure it could bring to ordinary people.

And the tomb readers casting light on a mysterious medieval message

from England's bloodiest battle. Stories from the heart of the North

Elderly, frail, vulnerable - the people who could most expect the

very best from the NHS. But even the prime minister has said there

is a real problem with nursing care for older people in our hospitals.

Is he right? I've been contacted about some worrying cases right

here in the North East. Nurses who attended to your every

need. Who'd find time to keep you company. It may be a rose-tinted

view. But still, it's a very different picture of healthcare

than the one I've been told about. Staggered and gutted that a human

being can be treated in that way. That person who's there, they're

the world to you, but for them tohe's just a number, well he's not

he was my dad - my daughter's granddad.

People have contacted me to say they were worried at standards of

care their relatives received. It's put on one particular hospital in

the spotlight. The University Hospital of North Durham - or UHND.

Opened in 2001 and run by the County Durham and Darlington NHS

Foundation Trust. Elderly patient Betty Howarth went in there with

shingles last winter. Whenever we went in, there was a

strong smell of urine. On three occasions we had to ask for bedding

to be changed because it was soaked. We reckon she was not showered for

seven weeks. Her hair wasn't washed for a month.

Then there's Fred Simpson, a cancer patient. He couldn't swallow, so

when he was brought any meals they were just left on the table because

he couldn't eat it. I proceeded to bring him soup every day.

should you be expected to bring in food for your own dad in hospital?

Not really, I would not have thought so, because he's in their

care. And generally what Sandra saw on the ward worried her. One time I

went in there were tablets on the floor. There was an elderly guy

wandering around with his pyjama bottoms off. There was a gentleman

in the bed opposite me Dad and every time we went in, myself, my

husband told the nurses that he'd soiled himself. The room absolutely

stank. It doesn't end there. A patient

emailed us. An older lady on the same ward asked three different

nurses to go to the toilet. They all told her to wait so over an

hour later she had an accident in the bed. Nurse said, "Do you go in

the bed at home Edna? No. Well you need to tell someone if you want to

go." So what are the standards of elderly care in there really like?

The body which inspects hospitals, the Care Quality Commission, says

it went into the hospital last August. They are still finalising

their report - but they did publish a draft on their website before

withdrawing it again. I have a copy and it makes for interesting

reading. "Elderly patients told the Care

Quality Commission they were treated with respect and dignity."

But for patients with dementia it doesn't look as good. The

inspection team wrote, "We saw on more than one occasion that staff

were rather dismissive or ignored their behaviour. One lady who was

in a ward at the end of a corridor was crying out - we had to prompt a

nurse to offer the lady reassurance." The inspectors also

observed five patients who"'were not given the help or prompting

they needed to eat or drink" and when the meals were cleared away,

most of it was uneaten. The staff were also overheard referring to

patients who needed help with eating as "feeders". The draft we

have seen from the visit last August says that improvements must

be made in two key areas surrounding respect and nutrition.

A CQC spokesman told us the inspectors returned in January to

check that was happening and that the final report is now likely to

show that hospital is compliant with essential standards. It's a

far cry from this idealistic view of hospital care. Even so, the

Patients Association and the Alzheimer's Society say these

worrying stories are repeated across the country. Angela Rippon

campaigns for both organisations. Ream after ream after ream. Case

after case after case. Of individuals all basically saying

the same thing, that their buzzers are ignored, they're not fed

properly, they're becoming dehydrated, they're not being

helped with the toilet. Imagine lying in a bed in your own faeces,

and your own urine, how degrading is that?

Even the Prime Minister is calling for change in our hospitals. But

why is it happening? It's easy to talk about nurses being too busy

but surely this is just about basic care? Absolutely and it makes

really difficult reading and very painful things for us to hear, but

what that is telling me is that the amount of work and care that is

required on that ward, there are insufficient people available to do

We've met the trust here in Durham - they told us that they now have

more staff on elderly wards and have a number of schemes to make

sure the patients are fed properly. They said they had not been given

sufficient information about the families we featured so couldn't

comment, but they say they are fully compliant with the required

standards. The Trust added that "As in any hospital there are times

when we do not meet the expectations of patients - we work

hard to make sure that lessons are learned." Fred Simpson's daughter

was shocked when she visited after he'd had a routine biopsy.

I leaned over to kiss him on the head and when I put the hand on the

bed and lifted it up, there was a hand print of blood where I put my

hand down. I pulled the sheet back and where they'd done this liver

biopsy it was just running out like a tap. The blood was everywhere, it

was horrendous. In its annual report the Trust says

that the number of patients falling in its care is a cause for concern.

He'd been buzzing to go to the toilet during the night, and no-one

came and he'd got up to go to the toilet and next day when I went in,

he had this massive gash on his head. You can imagine seeing him

and thinking what's happened to you? And it happened to Betty

Howarth as well. She fell going to the toilet on her own. Betty had

broken her femur - her hip joint. What happened next - it's all there

in black and white. In the hospital's own notes. Nurses find

Betty on the toilet floor. They call for a doctor. That was at

9.30pm. Three hours pass. Still no sign, that doctor was too busy so

they were told to call another doctor. 2am - still no medical

attention from a doctor. It's now 3.30am. Betty's been six hours with

a broken bone and no proper pain relief, doctors are bleeped again.

No-one came. It was 10 and � hours from the record of the fall, to a

doctor actually seeing her. 10 and � hours! What do you make of that?

Well, I could have got assistance there more quickly had we been on

the fells in Cumbria. In an inquiry the Trust accepted that Betty's

wait for a doctor to was" entirely inappropriate "although the fall

could not have been prevented. The Trust also accepted that the level

of personal care for Betty was" unacceptable ". Because the Trust

said it would address these shortcomings the ombudsman decided

not to investigate further. Betty only went into hospital with

shingles, but when it was time to leave, a nurse delivered the news

Brian feared most. I sat listening and then her hand

came on mine and on Betty's and they said she'll not be coming home.

I've known Betty for 72 years and to have her taken away is... I can

see her every day and I know that she's comfortable and that's

consolation, but it doesn't bring her back home.

So have we gone from this idyllic view of nursing, to an altogether

different picture nowadays? In terms of Fred Simpson's cancer,

there was nothing anyone could've done. He passed away a few weeks

later. Sandra was too upset to complain about his treatment.

Meanwhile Brian Howarth's getting used to living apart from his wife

after 60 years. Betty's now in a private care home. I know she's

well cared for and when I go to bed at night, she's not there, beside

me but I can rest my head on the pillow and go to sleep knowing that

she's cared for. It was prying he got in contact and last as to tell

this story, so if you have anything like this to tell us, please get in

touch with us. If you do not have your Valentine's

gift yet, how about a romantic night-time attack the cinema?

Newcastle has had a love affair with the silver screen. The

Tyneside Cinema is 75 years old this month and despite admitting to

a facelift, it still has a special place in the heart of its audience.

Down an alley way, some time in their mid- 80s, the cinema were

Kirsop and notebook filled with short hand. What he had found was

the key to one of the greatest love stories Tyneside has ever known,

Britain by the cinema's founder, Dixon Scott. He was just entranced

by the magic of the cinema and the pleasure and a light he could bring

to ordinary people. Laughter, tears, glamour, beauty. We do that for you.

It began 75 years ago this month course stop an entrepreneurial

picture house owner had had a brainwave, he called at the

Newcastle News theatre. People who did not have access to television

at the time, they may not have the time would the money to buy again

the newspaper, they could drop by the use the term. They could see

the news reels with the news of the day. He was not just in it for what

the money. He wanted a place where working people and their families

could gain information about what was happening in the world. It was

expanding people's understanding of the world in ways that had a been

possible up to that point. He did create a place where the

experiences of people could be whitened and their interests

developed. Big occasions for me where Cup finals, when Newcastle

United used to win. 1951. 52. 55. It was the only way, if he did not

go to the match, to feel the at the sphere. It was a place that had a

big effect on people, the unforgettable images they saw, of

guns booming out during the Battle of El Alamein. The images of the

death camps. But also beyond that, it was in its design, and a sort of

Cathedral, a palace of culture from a different world. Everywhere was

black, monochrome, so to come to a place like this, it really knocked

to your eyes out. It was really exotic, it was like something out

of Arabian nights. It is just as Dixon Scott had planned it. He had

lovingly wrapped his gift in the most elegant of boxers. He was very

much behind the look of the building, a reflection of the

places he had visited, the styles he liked, and they were all put

together in slightly zany way in It is very inviting the way you are

invited upstairs. It feels like a series of secret. People are

pushing on doors and poking their noses into doors where they should

not go. But I like that people have that sense of ownership of the

building. People can walk in off the street. How about having a

knitting circle? If we can accommodate these people, I would

The place has not changed at all in the 28 years I have been here.

has not changed a lot. When they did the redevelopment, I spent so

much money on the new tables, new chairs and new fittings, and yet,

what I wanted from it was people to walk in and say, this is great, it

has never changed. Poached egg on toast has been on the menu since

1937. Remember the book found in the skip

in the alleyway in the Eighties? That was Dixon Scott's notebook.

His own private thoughts about how cinema can bring culture to the

masses. How the cinemas grew, through the

great social need and industrial communities, with no hobbies and no

possibility of hobbies, it opened the world to them.

This little building has stamped its mark across the crop. -- globe.

It has influenced the careers of some of the world's best-known

film-makers. Many director is -- many of the

directors would not be making the films they are today but was not

for this place. They range from Ridley Scott...

I forgot to tell you, they are actually Dixon Scott's great

nephews. Marshall, Anderson, all of these

film-makers who come from the north-east. All of them have been

two and loved the Tyneside Cinema. I have an office behind the circle

in cinema one. The posters and the ice creams were kept there. For me,

and for my directing partner, we developed, produced, post produced

and then screened our very first feature film, Killing Time, all at

the Tyneside Cinema. It felt like my private cinema so I felt

incredibly lucky and incredibly grateful.

The film's people saw and experiences they had inspired

careers from writer to rock star. The first time I went to the

Tyneside Cinema was on an art trip. A Francis Bacon film called Love Is

The Devil. I have a very vivid memory of going

to see a French film from the 1970s at Tyneside Cinema. I was just

entranced by it. I had a real yearning for culture,

as I still do. Whatever is available, I will seek it out. And

be inspired by it. When you see something as brilliant

as that, you think, I would really like to get into this business. I

would really like to make stories, to make films.

Michael went on to write many successful TV series. And a book

about the cinema. It has always aimed to bring challenging films to

its audiences. It is a nice place to be. They run

mainstream films but they also run films that would appeal to a

smaller audience. It is very important that kind of tradition is

kept up. Cinema is an art form at the end of the day.

It was Dixon Scott's greatest passion.

Here is, for a man, the perfect love.

The course of true love never did it once made. This man has seen

some dark days like when the British Film Institute got its

hands on the place. It was run from London, and the

interest was not there. It was something they had to do in the

regions. I am sure most of these places were set up to fail.

It looks like it would close in fact, it did. People refused to

accept the fact it was closing and they organised themselves, a series

of protests screenings, and people Skipping a scene or two, after many

minor neck sand tracks and a major facelift, the old lady is as

radiant as she was when Newcastle first fell in love with her. --

minor nips and tucks. We have built a business for the

public, that all the highbrows and their allies cannot kill.

He was very imaginative. He came up with this idea of marking the

screening of the a film called Broken Blossoms. Down from the

ceiling of the cinema flutter today's little artificial blossoms,

and thousands upon thousands of these little flower blossoms

fluttering down and the audience were completely entranced by this.

It is the same with the cinema today. It is a magical place.

We have just been amplifying his original vision, in terms of his

vision for the space but also his passion for film. We are just

carrying on that. I would be lost without the cinema.

The next film we are going to see his Australian, and it is

erotically explicit. I am sure that from his portrait on

the staircase, as you go up through the cinema, he is looking around

and nodding with approval at what is going on 75 years after he first

If you look around, there are plenty of clues that tell us about

our history but in North Yorkshire there is an inscription about a

famous battle more than five centuries ago that has baffled

historians. It is a a mystery that a noble man slain in that battle

took to his grave. Literally. In a chill winter, 550 years ago,

the Wars of the Roses tore through On Towton Fields near Tadcaster

they lined up for what would become the bloodiest battle ever fought on

English soil. Archer against archer, cousin against cousin, steel

The unfreezing was it, to cut her last it from dawn until dusk. Many

thousands of men died. Countless foot soldiers were lost and many

noblemen, too, were to perish on that Palm Sunday in. One of them,

the Lancastrian Lord Dacre, would fall in the thick of the action.

Fighting in full armour would have been hard work. Hot and thirsty,

the Lord removed his helmet and drank what would be his last drink.

Some accounts tell of a boy with a crossbow hiding in a burr tree,

others say it was a lucky archer who spotted the vulnerable

commander. Either way, the end was the same. He fell dead and narrow

in his neck. The unlucky Lord ended up buried

close to where he fell. In the nearby village of Saxton, the

churchyard is the last resting place for the bones of both

Lancastrians and Yorkists. They're all equal now. But the ground

beneath my feet will be heaving with the dead of the battle. Most

of them do not have their names in the rest of -- in the history books

but this is the final resting place of LAT port.

The tomb dates from the 15th century and the years have been far

from kind. The ancient inscription has all but worn away and the last

time the words were legible enough to transcribe was probably in the

Victorian era. No-one can be sure how accurate the previous

interpretations of the complicated Latin actually were, and in recent

times, archaeologists have never attempted to record exactly what

remains of the inscription. Until now.

A team from the University of York, led by archaeologist Tim Sutherland,

are hoping to make a definitive record of the tomb's Latin

inscription and confirm what was actually chiselled into the stone

500 years ago. It says, here lies Lord Baker. -- Lord Dacre. Although

it is abbreviated Latin text, and therefore not a simple case of

reading it, and also, as you can see, there are sizable chunk

missing. Recording best with millimetre precision for the first

time will give us new information. The person who originally

transcribed to this did it several hundred years ago and so, do we

believe them? As with everything, we think we know a lot more than we

actually do know. The team set up their equipment and

prepare to take hundreds of photographs of the top of the tomb.

Before they can begin, though, they'll need darkness and a lot of

patience on a chilly night. We are moving a lighter over the surface

to bring out the shadows and taking photographs from multiple

directions and then we will stitch it together to see as much detail

as possible. We will combine a all of these photos into one photograph

and that will allow us to record the inscription that was left on

the tomb. It is a real jigsaw of light but

immediately the photographs offer a tantalising glimpse of abbreviated

Latin text. That is brilliant. You can see a really faint but in the

middle. Is that a bit of graffiti? It is going very well, we are

already finding things. There appears to be some graffiti.

Probably 200 years old or something. You can see the effect now. It is

blindingly obvious. Almost impossible to think you cannot see

this in daylight. The team work through the night,

managing to faithfully record every mark on the top of the tomb. It is

just over one month since they photographed that to him. Now that

the University of York they are starting to peace it together. And

initial analysis quickly shows that the weathering of the tomb's

lettering is far worse than anyone thought. It is obvious that a lot

of the stone has gone and it is extremely difficult to read full

words or reconstruct the entire -- entire inscription. We have lost a

lot of the surface. When this was fresh, it would have been almost as

smooth as this table top. This is just the start. Now we need to put

the day trying to a computer and now we have to spend a long time

manipulating all of the images, and interpreting every single line on

the surface of that to him. Once the letters are pieced together,

Latin experts will have their say on the meaning of the words. 10 is

convinced it is worth Prix effort. It will only exist in this manner

for a certain amount of time before it is crumbling into dust. For the

moment, the exact inscription on Lord Dacre's tomb may remain a

perplexing puzzle but the archaeologists have managed, at the