…with the March for the NHS A few shots from another wonderful gathering arranged by the People’s Vote for the NHS. It was held in Nottingham on March 28th, with a large crowd marching from the Forest Recreation Ground into the Market Square, where a host of great speakers including organiser Rehan Azam, Green Party PPC Lydia Davies-Bright, local nurse Lisa Clarke and others addressed the crowd. Read More →
[Widget_Twitter id=”1″] 100 business leaders, including Tory donors and supporters, put their name to an ‘open letter’ endorsing Tory policies – welcomed as a triumph by the party. 400 medical professionals write an open letter in 2011 urging the government not to proceed with the Health and Social Care Bill, saying it will do “irreparable harm to the NHS” – completely ignored. Here’s the letter, and the list in full: Health Bill concerns (04.11.2011) SIR – As public health doctors and specialists, we are concerned about the Health and Social Care Bill. The Bill will do irreparable harm to the NHS, to individual patientsRead More →
…If the Today programme won’t ask the difficult questions about the NHS, I will [Widget_Twitter id=”1″] When David Cameron woke up this morning, surely he must have had a little tingle of nerves about his appearance on the Today show. On the NHS alone, his record as PM has left enough questions to fill the whole three hour show; surely a short sharp burst from Sarah Montague was going to be an excruciating experience. Today’s researchers had plenty to choose from. For years, long before that insidious document, the Health and Social Care Act was enforced on the system, alarm bells have been ringing. TheRead More →
[Widget_Twitter id=”1″] It’s the schizophrenic nature of my existence as a freelance journalist that I find myself one day covering the world’s largest real estate exhibition in Cannes, the next walking along the ancient stone walls of Antibes, only 12 minutes away by chugger train but in an utterly different world. I had arrived filled with a sort of neurotic momentum. That forced pace that always builds up during a week of tearing around the miles of temporarily-carpeted drags between the row upon row of neon stands of the Palais des Festivales in Cannes. – But the further I walked through the still stonesRead More →
A new Bill plots the way back for the NHS – but it’s not Labour who are behind it First published in the New Statesman on Wednesday March 11th Later today, in the dusk of this parliament, a new Bill will get its first and perhaps only reading in the Commons. It’s unlikely to set pulses racing in any of the main party machines, but in certain circles the NHS Bill [3] represents the last ditch to save a dying public service. It is the result of three years of patient work led by two leading public health experts, Professor Allyson Pollock and Peter RoderickRead More →
DRAUGHTSMEN, expert in floating architecture, sat in their drawing offices and prepared designs for the new great palace of the seas, that was to carry restless comfort-loving people from one world to another. An exquisite little model of the palace was made in wood, with the innumerable plates and rivets marked thereon, from which model, again, a score of detailed plans were made showing each section enlarged. All this employed the well-paid works of scores of clever people but all this was but a prelude to the real thing. The real thing, after this relatively abstract preparation, was the concrete battle with resistant matter. WorkRead More →
[Widget_Twitter id=”1″] This article appeared on Open Democracy: Our NHS, on February 10th 2015 Doctors – the new political scapegoat? Benedict Cooper 10 February 2015 The NHS staff crisis and an over-reliance on locums are a result of political, ‘pro-market’ decisions – so why are politicians like Margaret Hodge so keen to blame the doctors themselves for the market they find themselves operating in? When Margaret Hodge was asked, did she blame doctors for the disturbing rise in locum costs, she quoted a consultant who had told her, “life would be easier and he would earn more money if he came off the books”. Doctors,Read More →
