Abandoned but not forgotten: hospitals, decay and urban exploration
Do you find the picture above, taken by an urban exploration photographer, unsettling, provocative or even beautiful? It appears to show an old delivery bed set against the clinical white tiles of a hospital maternity room. But the image is...
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The Demise of the Inconveniently Good Beveridge Model: Part 2
Part 1 presented evidence that England is now rearranging one of the world’s most effective and most efficient health care systems into a copy of the world’s least financially efficient system. Part 2 documents the role of politicians and private...
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The inconveniently excellent Beveridge NHS model: Part 1
NHS Model – made redundant for being too good? This is a blog in two parts. Part 1 will consider the international comparisons showing the current changes to the NHS as perverse in terms of the effect the sizeable increase...
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What is the best age to start a family?
The average age that women give birth to their first child has been rising since the 1970s in England and Wales. It was 23.4 in 1969 and by 2012 that average stood at 28.1 years. The data are of course...
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‘Serving the Public?’ Media, Politics and The NHS
We have medical programmes to suit our every taste. Currently viewers can choose high drama with Channel 4s’ ’24 Hours in A & E‘ filming around the clock in Kings College Hospital, London or everyday stories of sore throats, stress...
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Inequality
As sociologists, being against inequality is not enough. To continue to be relevant sociologists much engage in the protest sector.
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Lazing on a sunny afternoon? A historical perspective on risk and sunlight
As we emerge from the wettest winter on record most of us are looking forward to the summer and the chance to maybe get out into some sunlight. The pleasures associated with lying on a beach, going for a bike...
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Is skewing the data any different to juking the stats?
Media representations about NHS scandals focus on ‘bad apple’ professionals, and ignore the crises caused by current government policy, and the commercialisation of UK statutory healthcare.
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Twitter analytics, sociology and #SaveOurNHS
The global interconnected network of computers known as the Web offers opportunities for new forms of social analysis – not least the possibilities offered by ‘big data’ – digital data sets so large they require novel computer processing and software....
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Action and Foresight Sociologies – Urgent!
At the BSA’s Medical Sociology Group conference in York this year the ‘Cost of Living’ group (@Cost_ofLiving) organized a symposium to address the coalition government’s attack on the National Health Service (NHS) in England. It was a privilege, if a...
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“Maybe we just need to be a little bit more… sexy?”: What is ‘public health advocacy’ and should health inequalities researchers be doing it?
Health inequalities in the UK are a major challenge, and they are growing. The apparent failure of policy efforts to reduce these inequalities often prompts calls for more public health ‘advocacy’ from researchers in the field. It is argued, first,...
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What’s in a smile? Oral health, consumption and technology
We all know that toothache can often involve unbearable pain for the sufferer. From Shakespeare to Shaw writers have remarked on how the agony of dental pain can lead to total distraction from all else. Robert Burns even wrote an...
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