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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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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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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I, Daniel Blake – is this the collapse of the social contract?
Ken Loach’s most recent film I, Daniel Blake tells the story of Daniel, a fifty nine year old joiner from Newcastle, and Katie, an out of work single mother of two from London. They become perhaps unlikely friends after meeting...
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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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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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WRAGs to ‘riches’: Closing the disability employment gap
Iain Duncan Smith (IDS) recently resigned from his position as the Work and Pensions Secretary having seemingly suffered a delayed bout of morality. In his resignation letter he explained that he felt the cuts proposed in #Budget2016 were ‘a compromise...
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Manufacturing fictions: Gothic morality tales
I am not the first person to point out the Gothic nature of capitalism, nor is it a particularly recent observation. The full extent of just how gothic it is dawned on me during my time at Shades City Centre...
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Social policy and austerity outcomes
It has been argued that sociologists should ‘catch up’ with behavioural scientists and get more involved in trials of social policy, engaging in a culture of ‘experimental government’. I would be the first to agree that we could develop a...
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Becoming a scientific society: making the living laboratory work for public services in Wales
Government departments and their frontline staff are constantly experimenting with new policies and different methods of delivering public services to try to discover better ways of doing things. For example, it’s thought that some health boards in Wales are now...
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Q: “When is an NHS provider not a qualified provider?” A: “When it’s a willing provider…”
What’s the difference you might ask? Well, here’s the rub, according to the last edition of Private Eye, there isn’t one! December’s edition of Private Eye reported a range of concerns about the regulation and governance of Any Qualified Providers...
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Extending Patient Access to GPs: who will benefit?