The Guardian (Free subscription) | 3 hours ago
Leading health experts round on the health secretary Andy Burnham today, warning him off reversing a Labour programme of modernisation and competition within the health service. Burnham surprised cabinet ministers and policy officials alike when he announced in September that the NHS would return to the "preferred provider" model of services that existed before the government opened the...
SOCIALIZED MEDICINE (Free subscription) | yesterday
Latest political brainwave in Britain: NHS will provide free marriage guidance Talking therapies are generally useless but so is the NHS on many occasions so I suppose it is a fit. They already support acupuncture. Getting real medicine -- like getting diagnostic tests done -- however, is often too hard. The NHS is run by politics not science or economics Couples are to be offered marriage guidance...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | yesterday
Extended 'talking therapies' programme aims to tackle anxiety, mental illness and depression The government is to announce that divorcing couples will be offered counselling on the National Health Service for the first time in an effort to tackle growing rates of depression. The move will be unveiled by health secretary Andy Burnham this week. From April, couples' counselling programmes will be launched...
Labour.org.uk (Free subscription) | 21/11/2009
Labour’s Health Secretary Andy Burnham and Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper have written to David Cameron attacking his misleading comments yesterday suggesting Labour planned to cut disability benefits. It followed an email to Conservative Party member where he said "unbelievably, they're cutting disability benefits for the oldest and most vulnerable members of our society."...
Graham Pointer's Blog (Free subscription) | 21/11/2009
For those who follow Northern Ireland politics, there is one thing which happens from time-to-time, when the Democratic Unionist Party runs a candidate in a seat which is held by the Ulster Unionist Party (or which has recently been held by the UUP), and the unionist vote splits, leading to a nationalist, from the Social Democratic & Labour Party or Sinn Fein, either winning or coming close to...
Net News Publisher (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
U.K. Culture Minister, Margaret Hodge, has placed a temporary export bar on a painting by William Dyce, Welsh landscape with two women knitting. The Minister’s ruling follows a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest, administered by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). The Committee [...]
Islington Newmania (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
Inflicting Margaret Hodge on Barking was the ultimate New Labour arrogance . It was she who lost Islington for Labour . With 50% in social housing ,70% of whom are on benefits , that ought to have been impossible, but with her busts of Lenin, lunatic squander and blind eye for the collapse of child services, she did it . She is a walking insult to the core Labour vote , the “Taken for granteds”....
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
• News: Swine flu jab to be offered to healthy under-fives • Features: The UN gave children rights - it's time we consulted them • Comment: Kick up a stink for better sanitation Welcome to the daily news round-up from SocietyGuardian.co.uk **************** Today's top story - Tories 'scaremongering' over national care service plans Labour's Andy Burnham says it is 'gutter politics'...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
Labour party activists in Barking are not taking the threat of the BNP lightly The evening rush outside the Vicarage Fields shopping centre in Barking has the skin tones of many of our major cities. A white English woman in a shiny black raincoat hurries to a cash machine. Another woman of Chinese extraction walks by, her neck protected by a fake-fur lining. Two Asian men in jogging gear chat behind...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
Health secretary Andy Burnham says it is gutter politics to claim benefits for pensioners with disabilities will be cut The government accused the Tories of "scaremongering" and "gutter politics" today for refusing to support its plans for a national care service. The shadow health secretary, Andrew Lansley, welcomed the broad thrust of the plans, saying they were a "step...
Jon's union blog (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
As I race to catch up with the fun and games over recent days I find myself having to return to Tuesday morning and a meeting of our UNISON Regional Committee. This was not perhaps the most exciting meeting I have attended in the recent past. We discussed the reasonable positive recruitment data (concerning which I pointed out that the various figures in the reports before us did not tally) and a range...
The Appalling Strangeness (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
Good news! Some railway stations are going to be improved. But take a look at this list and see whether you can clock the link: Manchester Victoria – Tony Lloyd LAB Clapham Junction – Martin Linton LAB Barking – Margaret Hodge LAB Warrington Bank Quay – Helen Southworth LAB Preston – Mark Hendrick LAB Wigan North Western – Neil Turner LAB Luton - Margaret Moran LAB...
The Corner (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
"Death Panels" is an emotional term (to put it mildly) that, as a practical matter, is not necessarily inaccurate. Here are two stories from right-of-center British newspapers (the Daily Mail is the more tabloidy of the two) about the prescribing (or not) of one drug (sorafenib and Nexavar are the same compound) that show some of the issues involved in the way that the British system actually...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
Labour says the Conservatives are 'completely wrong' to claim some pensioners could lose up to £3,400 a year from the government's plan unveiled in the Queen's speech The Conservatives were today accused of "scaremongering" after claiming that more than 2 million old people could lose out under the government's plan to offer free social care at home to needy pensioners. Labour claimed...
The Economist (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
A shadow culture secretary begins to makes his mark THE Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has rarely been the frivolous sideshow suggested by its Whitehall nickname, “the ministry of fun”. It was a training ground for some of Labour’s brightest prospects, including James Purnell and Andy Burnham. It has a big role in staging the London Olympics in 2012, perhaps the biggest...
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