Archive for July, 2009
It’s not the gender gap at 5 we need to worry about
Posted by Anastasia de Waal in Education on 31/07/2009
The joy of ministerial responses
Posted by James Gubb in Health, Politics on 30/07/2009
by Peter Davies
There’s a glorious pattern to ministerial responses. Here’s the Department of Health’s official spokesman quoted in The Daily Telegraph, in repost to our book ‘Putting Patients Last’, released today, in which we argue that the new generation of NHS organisations, set up ‘businesses’, still have much to learn about customer service. Under pressure from government, we find they still put the demands of the state, rather than the needs of patients, first.
Introducing Captain Euro, Dr D. Vider – and Miss Information
Posted by Laura Brereton in European Union on 29/07/2009
By Nicola Di Luzio
EU Tube and ‘Captain Euro’ may sound like satire, but unfortunately they take themselves very seriously. Having spent the past half hour gazing at my computer screen in a half-way house between horror and incredulous hilarity, I have no doubt that you too might benefit from the procrastination opportunities that Captain Euro has to offer at www.captaineuro.com. Read the rest of this entry »
Why Giving Life a Price Devalues It
Posted by David Conway in Family, Marriage and the Culture, Health on 28/07/2009
‘If it gives a couple like us the chance to start a family, then surely it is good thing.’ So was an infertile woman quoted as arguing in yesterday’s Times for infertile couples like her and her husband to be allowed to buy eggs from fertile women. At present, donor payment is illegal here and, since the end of donor anonymity in 2005, the number of eggs donated has plummeted.
First, do no harm
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 27/07/2009
Ever since Lord Darzi’s publication last year, High Quality Care for All, all the rhetoric is in the higher echelons of the NHS is that quality is the new organising principle (as if it shouldn’t always have been). It’s the new ‘buzzword’, replacing ‘tariff’, ‘payment-by-results’, ‘foundation status’ etc., according to the former minister. Certainly – and to Lord Darzi’s credit – it’s much more on the radar, and clinicians are more engaged than the passengers they have been in recent years.
Read the rest of this entry »
Micro-mismanagement
Posted by Anastasia de Waal in Education on 24/07/2009
The Children, Schools and Families Select Committee released its findings yesterday on the role of ministers in the 2008 Sats fiasco, which saw hundreds of thousands of Key Stage 3 pupils waiting months for their test results.