Adventures in Human Being
Francis, Gavin (2015) Adventures in Human Being, London: Profile Books. Much praise has been lavished on ‘Adventures in Human Being’ by Gavin Francis, a multi-prize-winning best-seller admired by Hilary Mantel (who calls the book ‘sober and beautiful’), John Berger and Robin McKie....
More…
Antisocial crimes in Gottsunda; A vicious circle?
In Gottsunda, an outlying suburb of Uppsala, a University town in Sweden, unrest marked the end of July. About 30-40 youths, all men, burned bins, tyres and more than 70 cars. The main street was blockaded with boulders and burning...
More…
Scarred for life
At a research meeting last week, a general practitioner who offers health checks to young, unaccompanied refugees, described his work. He had interviewed 44 young men from Afghanistan who all, report themselves to be in good health, with no special...
More…
School Holiday Hunger
The cost of the school holidays makes them a crunch point for families paying the price of austerity politics. Children who benefit from free school lunches are often going hungry once their school shuts for the holidays. The cost of...
More…
Same difference? – From Northwick Park in 2006 to Rennes in 2016
As someone who has researched healthy volunteer involvement in clinical trials I was disturbed by the events in Rennes, France last week, where after taking part in a clinical trial, a healthy volunteer died and 4 others were left in...
More…
Why cutting spending on public health is a false economy
Public health spending is under threat. This despite the fact that increasing investment in prevention is the foundation of a sustainable NHS. Cutting these budgets is alarmingly short-termist and indicates a fundamental failure of the government to understand the changing nature...
More…
“A Kinder Politics and a More Caring Society”
Jeremy Corbyn stood for election as the leader of the UK Labour party on the pledge of a new “kinder politics and a more caring society”. Taken at face value it seems difficult to see how anyone can argue, or...
More…
Shame & the illegitimacy of dependency
Connecting toxic discourses to the health inequalities debate One of the many toxic features of neoliberalism is the way in which it divides the population into those considered deserving or undeserving. This was recently seen through the ‘strivers’ and ‘shirkers’...
More…
Whose quality of life?
I was 10 years old when I made a return visit to the neonatal intensive care unit where I was treated after my premature birth. I stared at the tiny occupants in the incubators, seemingly unaware of their sterile, plastic,...
More…
2015: Time for politicians to make a healthy New Year’s resolution
It’s that time of year. Millions of British people resolve to change. Quit smoking. Eat better. Exercise more. Drink less. Breaking a New Year’s resolution is as much a British tradition as making one though. So what can we learn...
More…
Detoxing Schools: Do lotteries for school places offer the best medicine?
The best social science book I have read this year is Toxic Schools, Bowen Paulle’s account of urban high-school-life in New York and Amsterdam. Paulle demonstrates how divisive educational systems that segregate poor, black and other ethnic minority students into...
More…
The Only Way We’ll Get Change Is Through Involving People In Change