8 May 2025

This is a joint letter from Gillian Lacey-Sollymar and Sir Nicholas Mostyn

Dear Friends and Colleagues

We are in the same club, a club that no one wants to join let alone be a member of, and which, if you don't mind giving us three minutes of your time, you can maybe help us to put into liquidation.

The club is the group of people in this country who have Parkinson's Disease. We are both members of that group. We would both rather not be, to be honest. However, Parkinson's is a Cinderella disease, largely forgotten by the powers that be. That cannot continue. We also are part of the Movers and Shakers www.moversandshakerspodcast.com originally created as a podcast on living with Parkinson's, but which has now taken on further responsibilities because the situation for what we call Parkies is lamentable in the UK. Let us give you two simple statistics: Parkinson's is the fastest neurological condition in the world and in the UK we are 44 out of 45 European countries in terms of the number of neurologists per head.

What we are calling for is the implementation our "Parky Charter" (see below) which would make care better and a cure much more likely. Please do support us. What are we asking for? As we said, three minutes, of which two have already been used up reading this!

If you could possibly give us one more minute by signing the government petition www.parkypetition.com calling for a formal debate on the subject, that would help us enormously. We need it quickly because the petition is only open for a short while. We also need it in large numbers because the government will give us a debate but only if we get 100,000 signatures. So far, we are at 26,000 which is pretty good, but very far from our target.

It takes less than a minute. Probably 20 seconds to sign and another 30 seconds to verify the email that comes in as a result of that signature.

If, in addition to signing it, you would forward this letter email to two or three of your friends or family to sign it, then will get us very far along the way. Maybe they too would forward it on. Good old pyramid scheme!

I'm sorry if this sounds pushy on our part, but if you know anyone with the wretched illness, you will know what a horrendous thing it is. If you don't know anyone, then thank your lucky stars!

Best wishes
Gillian and Nick

-