By:
On:

This piece appeared in PRN Magazine in July 2015 Nursing in crisis: The disappearing numbers   A pay-freeze, a row over safe staffing and new rules to kick thousands of nurses out of the country: it’s been a stormy summer in medical politics. Benedict Cooper reports. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the government has it in for the nursing profession. In the last two months alone, a string of policies have put pressure on a workforce already in strife, and laid some shaky stones to step over next.First NHS England asks NICE to halt an investigation into safe staffing – to the approval ofRead More →

By:
On:

This article appeared in the New Statesman in July 2015 George Osborne quietly slipped into his budget some news that the medical staff perhaps dreaded, perhaps didn’t even imagine was possible: the public sector pay freeze will continue. For another four years. I’ll just let that sink in. For months, doctors and nurses have been begging the public and the government to take notice: pressure on the wards is building to dangerous levels. Medical staff are overworked, under-appreciated and underpaid, and now there’s this insult to injury – a further slap in the face from a Chancellor unwilling to reward their graft with a shareRead More →

By:
On:

From Will Hutton’s Them and Us (2010); Chapter 6 ‘Blind Capital’ “The new credit default swap (CDS) was meant to insure the holder of a security against default, but in fact it did little more than provide the means to speculate on the price of bonds, rather as currency options could be used to speculate on currencies. Again, there was no insurable interest: the CDS was not an insurable premium but a gambling chip. Buy a CDS in a bank or country debt, and as soon as there was concern about the credit-worthiness of the loan the price of the CDS would rise. Hedge fundsRead More →

By:
On:

[Widget_Twitter id=”1″] This article appeared in the New Statesman on July 1st 2015 Staffing: the time bomb at the heart of the NHS There’s an unnerving continuity at the Department of Health: a maddeningly consistent split between two realities. First there’s what’s going on in the wards, in the hearts and minds of the profession. Then there is what ministers like Jeremy Hunt and Ben Gummer say at the despatch box. The DoH must be aware, for example, that on Tuesday the Royal College of Nurses (RCN) voted 99.4 per cent in favour of a motion to lobby to reinstate the investigation by the NationalRead More →

By:
On:

This article appeared on Open Democracy: Our NHS on Tuesday June 2 The market is reaping as  Jeremy Hunt sows Tough talk by the Health Secretary on NHS agency costs belies the fact that the problem occured on his watch – and as a result of his government’s market policies. Today’s announcement on reducing the costs of agency nursing staff sounds like good old Tory get tough stuff. The NHS “needs to deliver its side of the bargain, which is to make efficiency savings”, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said today. He continued: “Can we really afford the kind of care we all want? With aRead More →

By:
On:

‘Sanctioned’ by Dani Lafez. Dani’s artwork is for sale here – proceeds go to arthritis research.  The blind faith of the right  (and what’s left for the Left) [Widget_Twitter id=”1″]  Dani is a very poorly lady. Severe rheumatoid arthritis is attacking her spine, she has a snapped lumbar ligament, and last week after a gruelling eight needles were injected into her vertebra, an x-ray revealed that a hoped operation to fuse two of the disks in her back wouldn’t be possible because the surrounding disks have disintegrated too much. At the age of 26 she is facing the rest of her life taking morphine, byRead More →

By:
On:

[Widget_Twitter id=”1″] I won’t lie, I felt pretty abject on May 8th. So many hopes shattered, so many people now entering frightening unknowns, feeling insecure, threatened, battle-weary; so much disappointment, so many careers dashed and prospects ruined. This is the reality which a whole nation of healthcare workers woke up to the day after the election. Because we the Left could not persuade you the voting public what was at stake yesterday. I’m sorry. I’m sorry we could not speak over the volume of a right-wing press complicit in the dismantling of our greatest public service. We could not persuade the BBC to give you the facts,Read More →

By:
On:

[Widget_Twitter id=”1″] I’m embarrassed to admit, that I used to dismiss talk of the ways the NHS was changing. I’d read a few things, but never really understood what it all meant.  I never really grasped the true nature of the health service, its history and the way it is being altered today. I shrugged off talk about private companies taking over, and counter-argued with the fact that the population was growing, ageing, and as a result the way we funded its care needed to change. But for the past 18 months I’ve covered medical politics for a number of titles, including the New Statesman, OpenRead More →

By:
On:

[Widget_Twitter id=”1″] A special election report for PRN Magazine analysing the main party manifestos and how nurses felt they were being represented in the campaigns. http://www.prnmagazine.com/election/2015/5/3/election-2015-special-reportRead More →

By:
On:

[Widget_Twitter id=”1″] My first feature in the debut edition of PRN Magazine, a new online title dedicated to the nursing profession. I was approached by the founder to cover medical politics and nursing, and this feature, ‘Fallen angels?‘, examines the link between reforms by the Coalition government and falling morale. Fallen Angels? A damning report in December revealed increasing levels of stress, anxiety, mental and physical health problems, and falling morale among the nursing profession. Benedict Cooper investigates this worrying trend. Benedict is an investigative journalist and writes regularly for the New Statesman. Illustrations by Rosie Irvine “A perfect storm is developing”, reads the brochureRead More →