Chocolate Survival Rate on Wards

It's always amused me that in the Harry Potter books, the cure for depression caused by Dementors (horrible creatures that suck all the happiness out of you) is chocolate. A group of doctors have taken this a step further and conducted a study on the median survival rate of a chocolate on a ward, whether Quality Street was preferable to Roses and who were the biggest guzzlers. I'll leave you to find out the answers here.
Now where did I put that Tunnock's teacake?

Why so Shy?

Happy Christmas and New Year to everyone. I've polished off the last of the chocolates and felt like a class traitor for watching Jools Holland on Hogmanay instead of BBC Scotland's offering, but it's their own fault. Can anyone at the Beeb please explain to me why it is that when all the Scottish/Irish bands in the world are congregating on Glasgow for the Celtic Connections Festival, that they can't invite some half decent bands on their channel? Brewery/ piss up etc?

Anyway, enough of that. As it is, I would like to ask the Beeb something else of a little more import. This article cropped up on Christmas Eve re a nursing home in Halifax called Elm View. It's the usual depressing story of neglect/sub-standard care. What is unusual about it, highly unusual, is that the care owner and the care manager got 12 month jail sentences.

Whoah! 12 months? When did that last happen? I think it was Mid Stafford and that took a massively raised mortality rate for that to occur. So was this a major news article?

Well, no. It stayed on the regional page, quite low down the Beeb's list of articles and by Boxing Day it was buried. I kept an eye on it in case it was just a matter of them garnering more details, but no. It hasn't re-appeared since. The local paper has more detail on it here.

So what's going on? The Beeb and others have revelled in stories of neglect of old people in homes and how the Can't Quite Cope Care Commission have been toothless tigers. Now they've found their teeth and it's banished to a back page? Isn't this what you wanted and isn't this a good sign that finally the law is starting to take the care of old people seriously? What's going on?

Answers on a postcard please.

I Think Continually of Those..

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are feted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

(Stephen Spender)

Rest in peace, Madiba.

Haw Naw...

Haw naw,  h-aah n-aah (Scots). A different outcome was expected.

I thought that someone would have announced this by now, but nobody has. So just in case you missed it, Prof Steve Field has become the chief inquisitor, - sorry inspector of GPs for re-validation.

Right, I'll go and get my coat now...

The Importance of Being Honest

A solitary truth-seeker who is unsupported either by tradition or community will degenerate into

mere eccentricity, eventually to be intimidated and crushed by the organized power of
 untruthfulness.

Read this and more here. Courtesy of Cybertiger in the
 comments section at Dr Aust's Spleen.
 Relevant in science, Stafford and politics too I might add.


Update: yes, I've noticed the wonky font, but left it because it added
 to the message. 

Good Lord! Crowding the House..

I said in my previous post that health politics had become interesting again. Well, hard on the heels of the Lewisham victory, another interesting thing has happened. Jeremy Purvis has become a Lord. He was one of a batch of three Scots consisting of Annabel Goldie (former leader of Scottish Conservatives, quite fun and tells naughty jokes when she's had a sherry, or so I'm told) Willie Haughey (gave £1million to Labour) and the aforesaid Jeremy. So who is he, I hear you ask?

Well, first of all, he hasn't been a leader, not even of the Lib Dems of which he was a member in Scotland. Nor is he rich (not as far as I am aware). And he's not even 40 yet; he's a bit young to be in fair round belly with good capon lined. But he is known for other things. He put forward the bill 'Dignity in Dying' in Scotland a couple of years before Margo McDonald took up the standard. And at first I thought this was why he had been made a lord. But recently he has become involved with an organisation called Reform Scotland. This is a sister to  Reform  in London. Both are rather ill disguised right wing think tanks although they both insist that they are independent. Jeremy Purvis's involvement at the moment is with a campaign called 'Devo Plus' which basically doesn't want to go the whole way on independence, but would like greater fiscal powers for Scotland (though they are rather vague on what those would be. I am not sure if Jeremy Purvis is a full member of Reform Scotland; when I clicked on his name on their website, no biography came up..

 But devolution isn't the only thing Reform Scotland has an opinion on. They produced  this report 'Patient Power' in 2009. In it they support abolishing GP boundaries, setting up tariffs, creating a purchaser/provider split in the Scottish NHS, ending the ban on commercial companies taking over GP practices and introducing insurance based (sic) funding for health. (Apparently National Insurance doesn't count; they mean private insurance, but I think they don't  want to use the 'p' word). Oh, and to have not-for-profit commissioning trusts acting as honest brokers. Sound familiar?

Now this is all rather predictable from Reform Scotland (and from Reform).  What would you expect when its director and head of research were both political advisors for the Scottish Conservatives? What isn't so predictable is Jeremy Purvis' involvement in it, let alone being sent down to the Lords. And I wonder just exactly what is going on, but I feel it's nothing good. This is going to be one to watch for the Scottish NHS rather than England. And watch we will. As one of the less friendly churches in the neighbourhood said above its door,' You have been photographed twice and identified.'..

When was the Last Time a Health Minister Lost in Court?

Sometimes, just sometimes, something happens to give you hope. Today has been a huge win for the NHS and a shot across the bows for would be privatisers. Lewisham hospital campaigners won their case at court, which stated that Jeremy Hunt had acted illegally by attempting to downgrade Lewisham A&E. The rationale behind this was that it was being done because a neighbouring trust, South London Healthcare Trust, was in deficit. Two things can be taken from this.

1. The devolving of the health secretary's duty to provide healthcare backfired on Hunt today. The key element in the judge's ruling, in his own words were, "I considered that it was the absence of support from the local GP commissioners which constituted an additional reason why the decision of the Secretary of State cannot stand."

2.  This means that it may be possible to use GP commissioning against the privatisers. It remains to be seen what is going to happen to the rebellious GPs who would not give their consent to this, but it means that the fight for the NHS is not over, and we could be looking at the health equivalent of a guerrilla war, trust by trust. It vindicates Dr No's surmisings that if the rank and file GPs refused to cooperate, the government could not win.

3. We are fighting a new kind of media war. The BBC and others did the usual 'la-la-la-nothing-to-see-here' rubbish which we have become used to over the past three years. The health news today was completely dominated by an article on assisted suicide and yet another article on Stafford. I have no objection to either, but when was the last time a health secretary or any cabinet secretary defeated in court? The Beeb previously ignored a 30 000 strong march of protestors through London about Lewisham. But here's the important point. 38 Degrees funded this court action. And this means that those of us fighting for the NHS have found a way round the problem of all the placemen that the government put in the Royal Colleges and other institutions. It is possible for those of us so minded, to act together and get a result without having to go through the colleges or any of the normal channels. And a result can be got without help from the Beeb. A new frontier has opened via the net and the government is going to be hard pushed to fight it.

Health politics has just become interesting again...