The announced ‘solution’ to the care crisis really couldn’t be any worse. National Insurance (NI) with its start at a rate lower than income tax and a rate on the highest income of nil is demonstrably regressive. The fact that companies and employers will have to pay this NI as well and just after a… Read more
Category:
NHS
Opting out of what you regulate and run…
A brief and probably, random thought – shouldn’t an incoming progressive government make it illegal for MP’s themselves to use either private healthcare or private education? Initially at least, I cannot see much wrong with that – provided that we get such a government… That would have the effect of encouraging those who wanted to… Read more
Fat news
In reply to this tweet: Alan Watson@DietHeartNews, replied in a way that was highly informative – and was for me a lightbulb moment! “Saturated” means chemically stable – nothing else! A fatty acid is saturated when all available carbon bonds are occupied – satisfied – with hydrogen. Saturates resist rancidity and free radical oxidation [which… Read more
Our government should be about investment in us…
Surely that should be why we elect them? An interviewee on LBC suggests, quite reasonably that: …the NHS has of course, a 100,000 staff shortage and that most of the private, supplementary ‘health’ activity is effectively NHS, both trained and employed and just staff working overtime – but not for the NHS. This certainly gives… Read more
Covid – where we are and where we’re heading…
I post this report from former Director of Public Health, Cam Bowie, with permission. It does not make for particularly optimistic reading. Introduction The Covid Count a fortnight ago suggested a third wave now and a huge fourth wave in the winter if the delta variant is 20% more transmissible than alpha. We have up-to-date… Read more
Happy people will be good
Quite incredible that this short piece by the Labour spokeswoman on mental health reveals that there was more time taken off for mental health reasons in the NHS than even Covid. Clearly there must be an exceptional amount of pressure on the NHS currently, but surely the least we or rather, the government should be… Read more
Confuse the message, stay vague and blame the public
So Health Secretary, Sajid Javid was ‘feeling groggy’ and nonetheless, in fact, opted for the wrong Covid test. I feel tempted to ask whether these people have any advisors – I’m sure they do – but we know there exists throughout the cabinet a certain distrust of experts. It shows. Then Rishi Sunak and Boris… Read more
Mask wearing decisions…
Ahead of this afternoon’s trailed government announcement, there is a very good (and long!) thread by the Professor of Primary Care at Oxford, Trish Greenhalgh, on mask wearing here. To briefly and imperfectly summarise – there are very few reliable tests on maskwearing because they are virtually impossible to organise but such studies as there… Read more
Why focus groups need ditching
Thinking about St Patrick, who converted the Irish to Christianity, I’m delighted by his original idea of converting them by taking their own original festivals , subsuming them into his own and then declaring that they were in fact a similar proof of Christianity… That sleight of hand might be usable, I thought to myself…. Read more
Universal Basic Income (or Capital) plus…
Having highlighted an article from Geoff Crocker I have been investigating his own operated website. He has a really very good introductory video – which I cannot unfortunately show directly but it is available here at the simple https://www.ubi.org/ I’ve drawn from it what I consider the key points to a Universal basic Income (UBI)… Read more