A shuffling shambles: calamity or conspiracy?
The news earlier this week that Jeremy Hunt was not only going to be staying as Secretary of State for Health, but was also extending his ministerial remit to cover social care as well, came as something of a shock....
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On Vincent & Nina: Images of genius & madness
Over the summer I visited the Vincent Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. Given my grasp of Dutch is somewhat limited, I hired the audio-tour so I could better appraise myself of the exhibits. As I wandered around I was struck...
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Digital Healthcare: On the ethics and politics of data
A two-day symposium on ‘Digital Healthcare’ was held last month at the University of Nottingham, focusing on the social logics, ethics and politics of data and technology provision. Speakers and delegates from a range of disciplines came together to discuss and...
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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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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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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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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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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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On euphemism & sheer cloudy vagueness: the case of tax credits
In his celebrated essay Politics and the English Language, Orwell talks about politicians calculated use of purposively vague language. Last week’s vote on tax credit reform, if you listen to Tory commentators, has precipitated a constitutional crisis in the UK....
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Economising the social; a comment on the utility of social value
There is a prevailing policy imperative to produce evidence about the social impact of public spending interventions. Whilst on the face of it this may appear to be a sensible development, the ubiquity of notions like social value, social enterprise,...
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A sense of an ending?
By the time this blog is published on the morning of Friday 8th May, we may be a step closer to knowing what the next UK government is going to look like. Having said that, we may be further away...
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Co-payments for universal healthcare: the politics of blame