Published in The Daily Mail (February 13th, 2013) When Nick Clegg dropped into Hampshire to boost his party’s campaign in the crucial Eastleigh by-election, he spoke passionately about […]
Disability / Policy / Social care
We’re all living longer. How afraid should we be?
Published in The Independent (February 11th, 2013) On the day I was born in 1962, the number of British centenarians was in three figures. Since then numbers have […]
Health / Policy
Victims of our blind faith in the NHS
Published in The Independent (February 7th, 2013) It is just seven months since the NHS was presented to a baffled world as one of the great features of […]
Health / Policy
NHS privatisation fears? Grow up
Published in The Guardian (December 21, 2012) Nearly one in five patients having hip replacements and hernia repairs are handled by private companies, thanks to reforms introduced by the […]
Disability / Health / Policy
What the NHS needs even more than money – a dose of kindness
Published in The Daily Mail (December 5th, 2012) Even today, 19 years on, I can still remember every second of the day my world crashed in. It was […]
Disability
Put people with learning difficulties at the core of society
Published in The Observer (December 2nd, 2012) Another day, another outbreak of hand-wringing over how to protect vulnerable people from abuse in so-called care homes. Yesterday, it was […]
Disability / Health / Policy
Prejudice in the NHS is killing people with disabilities
Published in The Guardian (September 15th, 2012) Imagine it was your son or daughter, your brother or sister, your mother or father. They arrive home from hospital and […]
Health / Policy
The night that set back NHS reform by years
Published in The Daily Mail (August 4th, 2012) The rest of the world may have been perplexed, but it was 20 minutes that made Britain feel better about […]
Health / Policy
Why Danny Boyle’s rose-tinted homage to the NHS was so damaging
Published in the London Evening Standard (July 30th, 2012) The reviews are in, and the near-unanimous verdict on Danny Boyle’s extraordinary opening ceremony was that it was a […]
Health / Policy
The ongoing NHS scandal
Published in The Spectator (October 13th, 2011) Shock! Horror! Another report reveals the shameful care given to the elderly in British hospitals. People in the twilight of their life […]
Health / Policy
Great Ormond Street’s been put on a pedestal it doesn’t deserve
Published in The Mail on Sunday (June 19th, 2011) The lonely death of Baby P was one of those moments that jolted the entire nation. That picture of […]
Health / Policy
Patients suffer. Standards fall. So why is competition still such a dirty word in the NHS?
Published in the Daily Mail (May 26th, 2011) Living in a high-tech age of instant communication, it is easy to forget how painful the process of obtaining a […]