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 of the Department of Health but…
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Antibes & Juan les Pines
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 stones and flowered walls of Antibes, the slower…
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Burnt out and daydreaming on the TGV
St Pancras stood cool and strong, a serene rock. I cursed my own bad planning and dashed red-faced from platform to platform, as though if I moved stealthily enough I might be able to slope across the grand old station and avoid its disapproving stare. It had hardly been the smartest preparation for another big slog. I’d only groaned through the front door eight hours ealier, ragged and feeble after a day of travelling, and already the four o’clock alarm was screeching in my ear. It was pointless setting one, looking back. I had hardly sunk into anything more than a thin stream of unconsciousness during those three or so…
