The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) has lofty aims. In linking up to a third of general practice income to achievement against a series of quality indicators, it hoped to deliver significant increases in quality to patients. Has it succeeded?
A French appeal court has just overruled the decision by a lower French court taken in April of this year to annul a two-year old marriage on the grounds the bride had lied beforehand to her husband as to being a virgin. Apparently, the bride confessed to her lie on their wedding night after blood… [Read More]
Last week the European Union voted to scrap its much ridiculed regulations controlling the size and shape of fruit and vegetables sold within the EU.
It’s illuminating reading the DH’s two most powerful policy documents under New Labour, The NHS Plan (2000) and Lord Darzi’s recent review of the NHS, High Quality Care for All (2008). The latter is certainly more refined and less concerned with quantity, not making attempts to dictate the need for x more staff, equipment, buildings… [Read More]
Does anyone know, really know, how best the relentless rise of gang culture might be reversed that has come to afflict so many of Britain’s cities? Many of their run-down neighbourhoods bear today greater resemblance to the most depraved sections of south central Los Angeles than they do to the comparatively peaceful leafy suburbs that… [Read More]
At the forefront of global affairs last week was the election of the next US President, Barack Obama. As the leader of the ‘free world’ the US President wields such significant power that it undoubtedly impacts on Europe, acknowledged in a Gallup poll which found that two-thirds of Europeans believe that any action an American… [Read More]
According to a report from the Common’s Committee of Public Accounts, moves to improve education amongst prisoners are failing dismally. The Times Education Supplement reports today that the committee of MPs have branded the body set up to reform prison education, the Offenders’ Learning and Skills Service (OLSS), as ‘having failed in almost every respect’.
This Tuesday, a forum at Civitas heard the ideas of Bartley J. Madden, an independent researcher in the US. His big idea is a dual-track system that aims to speed up the time from trial to licensing for new medicines. Topical, given the recommendation of Mike Richards’ review on top-up payments this week to consider… [Read More]
For a child to do well in school, more is needed than just intelligence. Successful study also demands strong will-power. Children need to be able to resist the perennial temptation that they all will invariably face from time to time to escape the rigours demanded by serious study for the sake of the short-term immediate… [Read More]
The next European Parliament elections will take place in June 2009. Direct elections for the European Parliament were introduced in 1979 in an attempt to increase the European Union’s democratic credentials – after all it is difficult for an appointed authority to lecture the developing world about the moral superiority and practical advantages of democracy… [Read More]