Originally Posted by
iceman
On a different matter, has anyone heard from Blue Skies recently ? He has gone silent and I worry that it is not a good sign.
He and I didn't really agree on anything politically but when he indicated recently he was fighting cancer, I reached out to him
Here is an edited (for privacy reasons) response from him on 28 August 2023.. I hope he doesn't mind me sharing it and I sincerely hope he is OK :
"
Hi Iceman,
Thanks for such a great message & for sharing this, we seldom know the burdens others are carrying & that is an incredibly tough thing you're dealing with. Huge respect to you.
I was diagnosed completely out of the blue with leukaemia, one of those cancers with no known cause & initially didn't expect to still be around by now, but with new targeted treatments survival rates are increasing all the time. 6 months of Chemo put mine into remission but it woke up 18 months later & since it returned so quickly am now on fully funded immunotherapy which is doing a good job & miles easier to tolerate, & I'm still pretty active & busy & getting on with life.
Your birth country sounds like its at the forefront of new advances & that DNA & gene technology amazing. Great that you are being monitored & I wish you all the best too. Very sorry to hear about your cousins & other relatives, life can be so random & unfair.
Politically hopefully I'm not quite as dogmatic as I sound. We tend to take positions & end up vigorously defending them, when the way I see it most issues are complicated, Multi- faceted, involve complex trade offs, & difficult for any govt to fix esp with our short 3 year election cycles & unique constitutional arrangements. I mostly worry this specific group of Nat MP's will not do any better & may make things worse. National lost some great MP's after 2020. They look like coasting in so hopefully I'm wrong.
Thanks again & all the best to you Iceman,
Blue Skies