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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Welfare with conditions can promote social divisions
The UK benefits system is going through its biggest reform in 60 years. The revised system relies more heavily on welfare with conditions – that is to say, benefits allocated on the basis of assessments of individual financial or physical...
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Highlights of 2016
Dear Readers, Thanks for reading our posts and for following us on twitter. Also thanks to the many guest authors who have blogged for us over the last year. We hope you all have a merry break over Christmas and...
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Three Weeks in June and One Night in November: Brexit and Trump
The year 2016, with both Brexit and the election of Trump, has been extraordinarily bleak. In June, following a nasty campaign, peppered with a barely concealed racist venom, Britain narrowly voted to leave the EU. Then in November, after an...
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Do speed bumps kill?
Well, no, but you’d be forgiven for thinking they did after UK newspaper headlines last week. In focusing on the much-maligned speed bump, poor reporting of NICE’s guidelines on action to reduce air pollution deflected attention from the real problem...
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‘It’s like being told repeatedly that Father Christmas doesn’t exist’: medicines with no clinical benefit
Sorry to layer disillusionment onto despair for those of us worrying about Trump’s election. This Guardian piece caught my eye a couple of weeks ago for its account of the Choosing Wisely campaign from the Academy of Medical Sciences –...
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Same old story: between disability and disinterest
This week the UN Committee on the Rights of Disabled Persons (CRPD) published the results of an investigation that found that UK reforms to welfare have led to “grave and systematic violations” of disability rights. In the same week a...
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Do mental health anti-stigma campaigns work? #IAMWHOLE
To mark World Mental Health day 2016, the NHS, working in partnership with YMCA, has launched a new campaign #IAMWHOLE . This is designed to challenge stigma about mental health and specifically targets young people. It is the first time that...
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The Only Way We’ll Get Change Is Through Involving People In Change
All the evidence suggests that current social policy is failing miserably. It is increasing poverty and inequality, undermining social cohesion and personal relations, spreading insecurity and damaging and stigmatising some of the most marginalised groups in society, like disabled people...
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Remembering Aberfan
The Aberfan disaster of October 1966 is one that will never be forgotten in Welsh – or indeed British – memory. It is five decades since the coal tip which stood on a mountain above the Welsh town, engulfed a...
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The (not) Demon Drink?
A synthetic alcohol substitute looks set to challenge legal regulations and cultural norms in the UK and beyond. If there is one person who represents an almost permanent challenge to British Government drug regulators it is flamboyant scientist, Professor David...
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The real crisis in the NHS is democratic