Mind the Gap: On John Berger, mystification and the NHS
A couple of events this past week have put me in mind of some of the insights from John Berger’s classic text ‘Ways of Seeing’. In an age of ‘post-truth politics’, the observations and comments in this 45-year-old book seem...
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Introducing the new Easyjet NHS
As a rather plump NHS campaigner bedevilled by man boobs, I was given two good reasons to baulk at the recent announcement by The Vale of York CCG that they intended to restrict obese patients’ access to elective surgery until...
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An NHS gone rogue?
Much of the post-Brexit fall out has been explained by way of an asserted democratic deficit at the European level, where people feel faceless European bureaucrats have too much power and influence over what happens at a UK level. This...
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NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans
Local NHS areas have til June to try and submit convincing plans to dramatically improve healthcare whilst saving large sums of cash. But the decision making is secretive and dysfunctional. Predictions that the NHS is facing disaster have been issued...
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On Brexit, Hamsters & Hungry Pythons!
As we move towards the referendum on membership of the EU, British citizens face a bewildering array of claims and counterclaims. The conventional wisdom is that the voting public will favour the ‘status quo bias‘. Unfortunately, we seem to be...
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A ‘tour de force’ of obfuscation
A note on Sustainability and Transformation Plans in your brand new NHS Obfuscation is the obscuring of intended meaning in communication, making the message confusing, willfully ambiguous, or harder to understand. It may be intentional or unintentional (although the former...
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Jeremy Hunt’s solution for cash-strapped NHS trusts – cut 375 nurses each?
Jeremy Hunt talks of patient safety – but his NHS cash ‘solutions’ risk repeating the mistakes of Mid-Staffordshire The systematic and deliberate cash starvation of the NHS by Tory-led governments since 2010 has opened up an increasingly visible crisis, now...
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2+2 equals 5
The unilateral imposition of a new contract is the latest instalment in the ongoing junior doctors’ dispute. This is the most recent development in a long line of NHS reforms which stretch to the limits the standards of credibility, objectivity...
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Is the NHS really suffering a crisis of compassion?
When Robert Francis published his report on the ‘systemic failings’ identified in Mid-Staffordshire in 2013 the report was a damning indictment of management practices and unsafe staffing policies. But is also raised concerns about a lack of compassion on the...
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Going Private
Should we worry about the rise of fee-for-service general practice? Paying for GP services is back in the news. New models of private health care are being launched, and commentators are calling for NHS patients to make co-payments to visit...
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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...
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The real crisis in the NHS is democratic