Health

There is an extraordinary article in today's Times about the Public Health Minister Caroline Flint, aka Supernanny. It seems to be justifying some of the more draconian and nannying legislation that this government has put upon us. Those not familiar with Flint will be with her proposals. She is responsible for patronising campaigns such as the labelling of wine bottles and specifically telling middle-class wine drinkers that they should moderate their drinking.

When exactly did smoking become the new paedophilia? They are the pariahs of modern society, and all common sense and decency can go to hell if it means the government and media can whip up a frenzy about these evil doers. There is the tale (it may well be true) about the paediatrician who had a baying mob outside his house calling for his blood and parents refusing to let their children out of the house until this man was removed from society, all because he had a brass plaque outside his home which doubled up as his place of work stating he was paediatrician.

The Tories are pledging to create an independent NHS board that will take the day-to-day running of the health service out of the hands of ministers. Brilliant! Who came up with that idea? As regular readers of Picking Losers will know (and just about everyone else who reads a newspaper) it was Gordon Brown. Instead of trying to create new policies and actually offer an alternative, the Tories are once again just pursuing the tactic that Cameron will be more trusted and liked than Gordon Brown so if they have the same policies they will win. It isn't going to work though.

Richard Granger has resigned.  Never heard of him?  You will know his work.  He is was Britain's top paid civil servant (£290,000 a year no less) and was responsible for upgrading information technology (IT) systems and introducing electronic patient records within the NHS.  Yes, that £12bn upgrade system that has run well over budget, is two years late, is littered with problems and will not have that much benefit to actual patient care at all. 

And so to the BMA's annual conference where GPs voted on various issues. There were unanimous votes to carry the following motions:

This conference has no confidence in

1) the UK government's handling of the National Health Service,

2) the Secretary of State for Health in England

Continuing a trend of "the least likely people getting it right", today I think I can trump them all. Labour laughing stock and soon to be ex-secretary of state for Health, Patricia Hewitt has finally said something that is neither spin nor complete nonsense.

As predicted, yesterday was a bad day for Patricia Hewitt - admittedly it didn't take Mystic Meg to predict that one, though!  However, it is hard to have any sympathy with her; she is heading a department that is spinning a genuinely bad news story in to something which doesn't sound so bad.  The headline "NHS saves £510m" is not only misleading it is actually bad news for all of us.  In an effort to hit targets and not go in to the red yet again, Hewitt has effectively taken away funding

"Political meddling has brought the NHS to its knees." So says Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the British Medical Association's consultants committee. "We are angry with the government for a woeful dereliction of duty - towards patients, towards the profession and towards the future. We have lost all confidence that the government can solve the problems it has created." Pretty damning stuff.

What better reason could there be to top up your glass (and make it a big one), than that the Government and the BMA want to "crackdown on middle class wine drinkers". Some people damage their health by drinking too much, so of course it is necessary for the Government to try to control the drinking habits of all of us. And while we're at it, I hope the Government will be cracking down on the prevalence of STDs amongst certain groups by promoting abstinence for us all.

Has the David Cameron honeymoon period come to an end? The grammar school debate has probably run a little further than he had hoped and there are signs that the right of party are fed up with being forced to tread the tight line between showing a unified party willing to change and completely selling out. I'm sure Cameron is happy that this whole debate came about; it gives him a chance to show that he is in the centre ground of politics and will drag his party there with him. Unfortunately for him, though, he will never have a "Clause 4 moment".

It has been a focus for debate on Picking Losers for some time and like the idea or loath it, the Nuffield Trust health think-tank has called for greater independence from day-to-day political control for the NHS. Professor Edwards from the Trust think-tank believes that the NHS should be modelled on the BBC approach.

Eric Friar is a 91 year old RAF war hero. Now Mr Friar isn't having the best of times at the moment, he suffers from mini-strokes, bladder cancer, non-Hodgkins lymhpoma, has been diagnosed with bowel and colon cancer, shingles, dementia, is almost blind, has MRSA and is currently in hospital with pneumonia. His condition means he cannot eat unaided, can barely walk and has difficulty sleeping because he is in constant discomfort. His local NHS trust has assessed the case for assistance as "moderate" because the couple have savings of more than £21,500. Moderate!?

The NHS is expected to announce an under-spend of nearly half a billion pounds.  This has, of course, upset the unions, who say that staff and patients have been treated so badly and yet there is £500m lying about.  To me it is just another example of how badly managed the NHS really is.  How can they have miscalculated £500m spend?  But even more worryingly, how can the government justify spend many billions of pounds upgrade system and the botched online recruitment system, yet still have so much money going unspent?  Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that the government shou

The first high profile casualty of the NHS online recruitment fiasco has hit.  The chairman of the British Medical Association, James Johnson, has resigned after he was accused of being too close to the Government on the issue.  Mr Johnson, speaking to the Guardian, said "I appear to have lost the confidence of my council largely over a letter ... expressing some support for the chief medical officer, who is being blamed for what has happened.