More disconnected reflections on the past week’s news and experiences: I’m no great admirer of Gordon Brown, but once again you have to feel sorry for him. His visit to New York for the UN General Assembly and the historic Security Council meeting chaired by President Obama was in many ways a personal triumph: he [...]
Try to stifle that yawn at the prospect of yet another discussion of cuts: if we’re not careful, that’s what the general election is going to be about. What it should be about is mass unemployment — already the UK total is nearing 2.5 million, expected to hit 3 million soon — and the other [...]
On the always stimulating Our Kingdom website (“a conversation on the future of the United Kingdom“, part of the City University‘s[1] OpenDemocracy network) there’s an interesting if somewhat academic debate in progress about the implications for the whole of the UK of a referendum in Scotland on Scottish independence (whatever its result), and the disintegration [...]
The standard of nursing in many (not all, but many) NHS hospitals is appalling. Almost everyone has experienced, or knows friends and relatives who have experienced, atrocious and negligent treatment by nurses in NHS hospitals, including especially agency nurses. For years open discussion of this calamitous reality has been taboo. We value the NHS, as [...]
