A Blog About Health In Times Of Austerity

Latest entries
22 July

22 July

On 22 July 2011, A right-wing neo-Nazi terrorist carried out two sequential atrocities, planting a bomb in central Oslo before travelling to a Workers’ Youth League summer camp on the island of Utøya with the intention of killing as many... More…
From Period Poverty to Menstrual Cups

From Period Poverty to Menstrual Cups

(via the tampon tax and a brief trip to the Amex stadium) Way back in the 1980’s I wrote to my then local MP Sir Archie Hamilton to ask why tampons were taxed as a luxury item when it was... More…
Fear & Pride in Kiev

Fear & Pride in Kiev

I have been to some harrowing places. I have worked in conflict zones, and worked with both refugees and those who preyed on them. But it was at a Pride Parade that I was truly afraid. The setting: Kiev, the... More…
Matt Hancock- another victim of Perpetual NHS Shock Syndrome (PNSS)

Matt Hancock- another victim of Perpetual NHS Shock Syndrome (PNSS)

This week, Matt Hancock, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, called for radical change in the NHS workforce in order to support doctors and nurses who experience trauma in their daily work. Indeed Mr Hancock went so... More…
Chubby Boozers with Ageing Hearts

Chubby Boozers with Ageing Hearts

What will the person in the street make of recent public health scare tactics? As the politics of austerity continues to bite into NHS and other public budgets, Britain’s top health promotion brains have decided that precious future health resources... More…
Public Health and the (New) Media

Public Health and the (New) Media

On industry, audiences and health messages Public health campaigners are increasingly focussing on models of media engagement due to the considerable and growing amount of evidence that media campaigns can change population health behaviours. New forms of media (that is... More…
Is there Justice for Trauma Survivors?

Is there Justice for Trauma Survivors?

Society has an uneasy relationship with trauma. It is easier to look away.  Austerity has placed our most vulnerable citizens and those who work with them, in precarious positions, which masks suffering. Currently, mental health budgets are inadequate to meet... More…
Why private alternatives to the NHS are so much more expensive

Why private alternatives to the NHS are so much more expensive

The NHS has survived to the age of 70 and now costs the UK just over £120 billion per annum. Many advanced economies spend even more on healthcare per head of population. Why do fully paid-up capitalist nations persist with this Stalinist approach to... More…
Online GP consultations threaten to create a two-tier healthcare system

Online GP consultations threaten to create a two-tier healthcare system

GP at Hand is a medical practice in London with a difference. Unlike a traditional practice, eligible patients can register online in three minutes and have a video consultation on their smartphone with a GP within two hours. Great for... More…
Is it still paranoia if they’re really out to vet you? On Clarivate Analytics

Is it still paranoia if they’re really out to vet you? On Clarivate Analytics

As open access has increasingly been mandated, academic publishers have realized that there’s money to be made in tracking our ‘outputs Imagine that you’re out in public when a call of nature of the excretory variety strikes. At this point,... More…
Compulsory coupledom: in sickness and in health?

Compulsory coupledom: in sickness and in health?

Recent research has suggested that people who live together, including cohabiting unmarried and married couples, report better health than individuals who have never engaged in such relationships. Perhaps not surprising when we think about the poor health outcomes that can... More…
NHS staff discover they will get hundreds of pounds less than many thought

NHS staff discover they will get hundreds of pounds less than many thought

BREAKING NEWS: UPDATE 20:15, 25th July 2018: The head of the Royal College of Nursing, Janet Davies, has today taken the unprecedented step of writing to members to apologise that staff were given incorrect information about their pay deal voted... More…