The problem with the NHS is very simple: there isn’t enough capacity. There aren’t enough GPs, hospital doctors, nurses, physios, OTs, lab techs, radiographers, etc. We currently have less hospital bed capacity than Mexico. We have the second lowest in Europe. On all metrics, the UK is way behind comparative nations and no where near […]
Dear Editor, Just as we had started to relax and get our lives ‘back to normal’, 31 July 2023 saw new Covid-19 variants classified in the UK: Covid ‘Eris EG.5.1’ is out there. Hospital admissions are spiking, as a consequence of the poor summer weather (meaning that we have spent more time indoors) and waning […]
The change to cancer targets is a big deal! The issue is the 28-day to diagnosis versus the 2-week wait target. That is, if your GP suspects cancer, from the point of referral, 75 per cent of patients should be diagnosed or given the all clear in 28 days. Currently, if your GP suspects cancer […]
How many people have been nudged, goaded or battered into believing that the NHS is now beyond saving? How many have been nudged, goaded or battered into believing that privatisation for some or all services is the only way forward? What a very clever campaign the Conservatives have fought! How very happy their many private […]
Even on the 75th anniversary of its foundation, the NHS came under assault from the far-right. This article tackles the claims of its detractors and shows how a team of volunteers has taken the argument to Parliament to defend the NHS – and the UK economy. The assault on the NHS When the NHS was […]
Leader of the Men’s Mental Health group at his school, year 12 student, Oli Smith, candidly shares his own struggle with body image and the impact sport has had on this, including his experience of anorexia. He also offers advice for anyone struggling with the same issues. Body image is a major focus point which […]
Monday was another damning day for the government at the Covid Inquiry. It is becoming clearer what the recommendations from the Inquiry are likely to be… But there is also a bigger question raised about criminality… TUC union, the BMA, the Health Foundation, and The British Red Cross gave evidence. Many of the government defence […]
Rishi Sunk has said that this year’s public sector pay awards have been agreed in full but with no new or additional funding to cover them. There is literally no economic sense in this whatsoever. Pay rises of around 6 per cent for education and health have been announced – with there being no room […]
In the week when the NHS celebrated its 75th birthday, there was an article in The Telegraph headlined ‘NHS to slash bureaucracy by recruiting doctors and nurses over pen-pushers’. This, of course, led to all the usual clichés about the NHS being full of managers. I thought I’d take a look at what the evidence […]
No doubt we are at a tipping point for the future of healthcare in the UK You will hear a lot of misinformation, disinformation, and barefaced lies over the next 18 months – a £200bn/yr industry is on the table. So here are the facts… Has the NHS been value for money? Here is the […]
Editor’s comment: Apologies for the duplication of text in places where we have had to use the tweet to capture the video. It was too good and informative a thread to pass up because of technical challenges, so it is a bit of a hybrid. So, Hancock’s first appearance at the Covid Inquiry did not […]
Partygate is triggering, I assume for most of us. For me, it is the abandonment of the public by the government that causes most trauma. So I wanted to share with you what I found to be one of the most shocking parts of the national covid response. It was March 2020 and I was […]
At the end of May 2023, I came across multiple, well-known, anti-vaccine Twitter accounts claiming that new Israeli data showed that there had been “No Known Covid Deaths in Healthy People Under 50.” We know from ONS data that in England and Wales there were 4976 deaths involving Covid-19 in the under-50s since 2020, so […]
Dear Steve Barclay, There seems to be a lot of interest on UK social media (#MedTwitter (@RoshanaMN) regarding how enticing Australia is for UK doctors. Here are a few examples from the international market you are competing with, from a junior doctor who made the move. You should be worried. For context, I work in […]
While we are all distracted by this government’s latest antics and dog whistles, it is pushing through a policy that will likely see the end of the NHS as we know it – at least in England. The guise is “patient choice”. The truth: biggest change in our healthcare model so far. This UK government […]
If you didn’t watch the Johnson lie/excusathon, here’s a potted summary. Disappointingly, the King James Bible did not spontaneously combust at the touch of the former PM’s mendacious fingers, but the smell of burning boxer shorts was definitely in the air. The Privileges Committee’s questioning, under Harriet Harman’s quietly authoritative chairmanship, was a model of […]
Junior doctors across England have undertaken three days of strike action from 13 to 15 March, during one of the busiest periods of the year for hospitals. This has been a long time coming, with years of stagnant wages and deteriorating working conditions forcing many to consider leaving the country or profession altogether. Six years […]
If it’s not three-word slogans, it’s multi-word lies and misdirection. Jeremy Hunt’s budget is full of the latter. Let’s start with the client press’s headline grabber: FREE CHILDCARE for one and two-year-olds! A friend messaged me: ‘Help me out here, because I’m struggling. They are going to give ‘free’ child care to 1 and 2 […]
For a few weeks in 2009, when I worked for DFID and it looked as if the H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic might be of a similar scale to what we’ve seen with Covid-19, I attended official-level cross-Whitehall coordination meetings. The meetings were huge, drawing on civil servants from across Whitehall, often multiple people from one […]
A Somerset County Councillor is on a clean air mission. “I’m keen to learn the lessons of the pandemic” says Councillor Oliver Patrick, “and one of those lessons is that airborne diseases like Covid spread easily between people indoors where ventilation is poor.” Oliver’s clean air campaign began in September when he started raising money […]
This is a long post from Oct 2019, and some of what it says would have seemed seem hard to believe back then. But now? Now when we see cuts to public services, the increasing wealth gap, steady defunding of council services, the running down of the NHS and talk of the use of artificial […]
My thoughts on the government’s new plan to the NHS crisis published today. Sum: They seemed to listen to the experts but are clearly not interested in recovering the NHS… There are some positives. But stating the obvious first: this is way too little, way way too late! We have been calling for action all […]
Oliver Patrick, Somerset County Councillor (Coker Division) explains why clean air, indoors and out, should be a priority for legislators. This week I built my 20th Corsi-Rosenthal Box (below) using the funds donated through my GoFundMe. Fifteen of these DIY air filters have gone into schools and Early Year Foundation Stage settings in the Yeovil […]
Andrew Bridgen may have apologised for breaching lobbying rules and breaking the MPs’ code of conduct, but he’s not letting up on his anti-vax campaign. Emma Monk analyses just one day of misinformation. In the process of writing an article about former Conservative MP, Andrew Bridgen, having the whip removed for comparing the vaccine roll-out […]
Although government seems to be in denial, it is clear that the NHS is in crisis – a consequence, in large part, of a decade of underfunding. The impact on the service nationally has been logged in detail, with the Financial Times offering a series of particularly thorough analyses. We wanted to find out […]
Dear Sheryll Murray You have often used the term “democracy” in your replies to me when challenged over your abysmal record as our MP – at least in the replies that weren’t just copied and pasted from the Ladybird book of lazy replies for MPs, at any rate. But, do tell me, can you prove […]
Those of us who fought hard against the Health and Social Care Act of 2012 (and I did, most especially on Twitter) always knew the danger within that Act. Clause 1 said: But then this was added: That section changed the whole focus of the NHS. The Secretary of State might still be responsible to […]
I watched agog as Nadim Zahawi went on the media rounds to brief – predictably- against our brave nurses and their strike action. With zero sense of self-awareness, he tried to paint their reasonable request to be paid what they are worth as “unfair” and “unpatriotic”, even at one point claiming it was “playing into […]
Dear West Country Voices, I think I distantly remember a time when governments cared for their people, nurtured them, assisted them, spent our money neutralising the corrosive causes of poverty and criminality. I get the sense that the ‘nouvelle vague‘ of the ultra-right wing is using us like lab rats in an experiment. Shrink the […]
Dear West Country Voices, Nurses are the first health professionals to vote for strike action. I fully support them and I hope that those of you reading this will too. The NHS has been ground into the soil by 12 years of ideological attacks designed to make it as cheap to sell to vulture capitalists […]