opinion.. Worrying reflections on the terror of tenerife

Last week I went on holiday to Tenerife with my wife, our first holiday together without our kids in 21 years.

I had been told Tenerife was a quiet place in May and was therefore very surprised when we arrived to hear emergency sirens and see so much police activity in an area about five minutes away from our apartment....

...There is a growing body of evidence that the UK’s ability to treat the mental health issues it faces are woefully inadequate. Our prisons are full of the mentally ill, who simply serve a sentence without receiving any treatment and then return to society.

This means that the police and prison service end up dealing with mentally ill people even though they are neither trained nor equipped to do this. Unfortunately, mental health treatment... more

Mick Gradwell is a regular columnist for the Lancashire Evening Post