Archive for NHS
Posts of the week: generating social capital and admitting parts of public services are second rate
Welcome to my weekly round-up of two blogging highlights from the past week: the post that I found most interesting or enjoyable to write and the post from someone else that I found most interesting or entertaining. A post from me… Using council websites to help local residents generate social capital Take a look at [...]
The riddle of the NHS budget
Over on the BBC website is a set of graphs about health spending, neatly and clearly laying out some of the issues with health spending, how it has grown in the past and what future plans may mean. Go take a look here.
How we can diagnose cancer earlier?
I chaired a roundtable event run by Cancer Research UK and the Royal College of GPs during the Lib Dem Liverpool conference entitled ‘Time is of the essence: diagnosing cancer earlier’. We were joined by a variety of stakeholders from the health community, including the BMA, Liverpool PCT, Merseyside and Cheshire Cancer Network as well [...]
Praise for government’s approach on mental health
Over on Left Foot Forward Mark Davies, a former special advisor to Jack Straw and now Director of Communications for Rethink, praises the coalition government’s approach to mental health: Mental health is one of the defining issues of our times. Always present, rarely talked about, people affected by mental illness represent a massive group who [...]
Why commission a report if you’re determined to ignore its conclusions?
Last August, the then Labour government commissioned a KPMG report into the future of NHS Direct (along with some other related NHS services). The report has been submitted to the current government, though not published. So if Labour MPs and members were saying how the government must publish the KPMG report right away to see [...]
Time is of the essence: diagnosing cancer earlier
On the Tuesday lunchtime of the Liberal Democrat autumn conference I’m chairing a discussion organised by Cancer Research UK and the Royal College of General Practitioners on the theme of “Time is of the essence: diagnosing cancer earlier”. More details are over on the PubAffairs website here. As I blogged previously on the following day, [...]
Paul Burstow’s hand at work in the NHS White Paper
Paul Burstow, now a health minister, has a long record of campaigning for better coordination and integration between the different services which look after people’s health. So although the government isn’t talking publicly about which part of the health White Paper has been driven by whom, you can see Paul’s influence at work, as reported [...]
The coalition agreement: national security and the NHS
Welcome to the fourteenth in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.
The national security section is brief, outlining the creation of a National Security Council, the commencement of a defence review and a promise to “deny public funds to any group that has [...]
Nick Clegg’s speech to the Royal College of Nursing
Earlier in the week it was Gordon Brown addressing the nurses but today it was Nick Clegg’s turn. As journalist Paul Waugh put it:
Ooh, Matron. Clegg going down a storm with at nurses’ RCN conference. Better ovation, more laughs at his gags than Brown.
Here’s the speech which got this reaction:
Thank you so much for inviting [...]
Test your knowledge of health policies
The Kings Fund has a fun little online quiz to test how well you know the health policies of the different parties. Good for a few minutes of relief from campaigning: www.kingsfund.org.uk/generalelection2010
