Health Act rag bag delivers part of the real prize

Health Act Rag Bag Almost unremarked in the rush of bills getting  the Royal Nod on Friday  the 13th was the rag bag of measures collectively known as the Health Act 2009. Tucked away among new powers to strengthen tobacco control; to place a duty on all NHS bodies, private sector and third sector... 
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Telling it like it isn’t: the language of the NHS

I always like it when the newsletter of NHS Networks pops into my inbox with its cheery “ping”.  Not only does it save me lots of time finding out things, but occasionally it brings a dose of real wisdom coupled with wit.  Today’s was no exception with its offering of a front page mini... 
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Never mind the quality, feel the blazer

His vision for schools?….. Or his? All of a sudden everybody seems to be interested in schools, with the two main parties slugging it out over who can be the more Dickensian whilst a major academic review of primary education (the Cambridge Review) is briskly dismissed by the Secretary of State... 
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Norsemen boost Policy Governance®

Split those roles Separating the roles of chairman and chief executive is a key condition to the successful operation of an organisation according to the tenets of Policy Governance®. This principle was discussed in a recent article by The Economist columnist Shumpeter asking ‘is there no limit... 
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Broon’s Care Bunny – Trick or Treat?

Broon’s Bunny makes roadkill of consultation? Was it a conjuring trick to thwart the consultation or just a soundbite one has to wonder?  We find it strange that with little over a month to go for people to have their say about the government’s social care proposals for England, the Prime... 
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England needs a Welsh lesson

The Conservatives created them in England and Wales without appreciating their full potential.  Labour neglected, belittled, callously fragmented their functions and then destroyed them in England as an afterthought in the NHS Plan, despite widespread agreement that they could and should have been... 
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That’s the way to do it: Eurostar shows us the way

Taking the Train: Big Strain Nothing spoils a holiday quite as much as a stressful and unpleasant journey.  This year we decided to take the family to South West France for a couple of weeks.  Big mistake.  Getting there and back was so bad it took us a couple of weeks to remember that we had actually... 
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The painful truth

“Text cloud” for this post below, created by www.wordle.net US scaremongering is a distraction “The painful truth about the NHS” as Marjorie Ellis Thompson said in a thoughtful Guardian comment piece recently,  is that scaremongers in the US are distracting us from the real... 
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Climate change warning for the NHS

“Text cloud” for this post below, created by www.wordle.net A latitude lesson We may not think much about it, but in these islands latitude should be a big issue. Get a map out and see what else lies between 50 and 60 degrees North. The British Isles are on a parallel with the Labrador Peninsula... 
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Parent power – just another piece of populist spin?

And their parents? A few weeks ago Gordon Brown declared that he wanted to make schools more accountable to parents. The National Union of Teachers spat back that this was just a bit of “populist spin”.  After all, they argued in their press release, “Schools already work with parents... 
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