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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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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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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Gig-Economy: Gig-Health?
Health and wellbeing in the workplace has been an important area of study in medical sociology and social epidemiology. Those knowledges centre on the complexity of workplace health, that health and wellbeing are the outcome of a myriad of social...
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Zygmunt Bauman: On the Quest for Health
Zygmunt Bauman, who sadly passed away at the age of 91 in January, was one of the most influential sociologists of his generation. Bauman was Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds from 1972 until his retirement in 1990....
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On ignorance, knowledge and health
In the age of alternative facts, WikiLeaks and the routine denigration of expertise, knowledge and ignorance have become highly politicised. Of course, knowledge has always been political: and nowhere is this more evident than in health and health care. Historically,...
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A Question of Sport?
Exercise is good for you. Exercise regularly and eat well and you reduce the risks of a catalogue of long term health conditions including obesity, diabetes and mental health problems such as depression. The message has been absorbed; millions of...
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You can’t wear a bag on your head: air pollution
Air pollution is often in the news as pollution episodes are reported in major cities in China and India. In London too, it is in the sights of the new(ish) mayor, who is calling for extra charges on polluting vehicles...
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On Brexit, Nurses and Migrant Workers in the NHS