Old wine in new bottles? On the new NICE Guidelines for Depression
Before NICE (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) finalised and published its first depression guidance in 2004, it made a draft publicly available for comment. NICE will make a draft of a new version of this guidance available...
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Tory landslide Was Averted
So, there is a general election tomorrow. Maybe one of the most critical elections in the post-war period. If you are reading this blog, the chances are that you deeply care about the NHS, schools, universities and believe in having...
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Muddying the NHS waters- a 5 year forward view
I knew it was coming. I didn’t know what shape it would take but I knew that, eventually, my habit of drinking voracious daily amounts of Diet Pepsi would eventually catch me up. I’d been told once by a drunken...
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The dynamics of health inequalities
Since the publication of the Black Report, through numerous subsequent policy documents and much policy activity the health differences between the rich and poor in Britain remain a reality which blights the lives of millions. Inequalities in health bring earlier...
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Performing Masculinity
In a little over an hour, these two talented performers say as much or more about contemporary masculinity as a whole library shelfful of sociological tomes Peter McMaster’s “27” is a theatrical piece which springs from a young man’s intimation...
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Learning to Drink in Nigeria
In Nigeria, there is no concept of ‘counting your units’ nor are there nationally co-ordinated public health campaigns to challenge the normalisation of drinking alcohol ‘to excess’. With little or no regulation of the alcohol industry, transnational drinks companies are...
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Extending Patient Access to GPs: who will benefit?
Investing in extended patient access to GPs is a key government objective, but which patients will benefit, and will it have its intended consequences? Despite little evidence that it is demanded by patients, extended access to GPs, providing care outside...
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Review: La Fille Inconnue (The Unknown Girl)
In a previous post, I lamented John Berger’s failure to represent realistically contextualised doctor-patient relations in his photo essay (with Jean Mohr) A Fortunate Man. By way of contrast, in reviewing The Unknown Girl or La Fille Inconnue, I argue...
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Progressive alliances & the parlous state of British democracy
There was news this week that Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt faces an ‘unauthorised’ progressive alliance in his Surrey constituency that will attempt (against Labour Party policy) to unseat him in the forthcoming general election. The proposal is that local Labour...
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It was Big Tobacco, not Trump, that wrote the post-truth rule book
After two chaotic months as president, Donald Trump is widely credited with rewriting the political rule book. We are witnessing Trump’s new era of post-fact politics, where distraction and obfuscation are central, and critical stories are dismissed as “fake news”....
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Logan Review: “The world is not the same as it was”
Is Logan the first post-Trump era movie? The movie Logan marks the end of a nearly twenty-year period in which Hugh Jackman has played the character Wolverine (AKA Logan). He is a mutant who has retractable metal claws, enhanced physical...
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On Brexit, Nurses and Migrant Workers in the NHS