As President Obama pushes ahead with his plans to reform healthcare in the United States, announcing a proposal that would vastly expand federal regulation of insurance and the healthcare industry as a whole in order to guarantee all Americans access to affordable coverage, he is facing some equally determined opposition. Conservatives for Patient Rights (CPR),… [Read More]
This week the DCSF showed a rise in the proportion of infant classes with over 30 pupils: a shift from 1.5% to 1.7% since January last year.
The HSJ today carries the revelation that the NHS is spending £144m annually carrying out operations on people who either have no significant complaints about their health before surgery or report that their condition is unchanged or worse afterwards. Should we be surprised? Probably not.
A debate hosted yesterday by Open Europe asked Does Westminster or Brussels rules Britain? The distinguished panel discussed many aspects of EU politics, including next month’s European parliament election, the Lisbon Treaty and the need for reform in the EU:
For some years now, it has been the declared ambition of the present government to increase the participation rate of young people at university to 50 per cent. Whether it was a wise ambition is questionable, seeing how incapable of achievement it has always been without seriously diluting A-level and final honours standards. However, because… [Read More]
Health sector employment of external management consultants has been making headlines lately. The HSJ reports DH board member anger over the appointment of McKinsey and Company to advise a panel of experts on how to measure GP quality, and today, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) announced it has obtained, through use of the Freedom… [Read More]
Two depressing findings came out about schools this week. The first is that the number of children on free school meals has risen since last year. The second is that one in five children are now on the special educational needs (SEN) register.
The NHS is supposed to be a universal healthcare system. There is one group however – one of the most vulnerable in society – who get a particularly raw deal: the homeless. The NHS funds services, not individuals. With no fixed abode, the homeless far too often fall through the net. As a discussion hosted… [Read More]
YouTube (the online video forum owned by Google) and Euronews (an international news channel) have collaborated to launch ‘Questions for Europe’, a new online forum to encourage debate ahead of the European Parliament elections in June.
This week sees the fiftieth anniversary of C.P.Snow’s famous ‘two cultures’ lecture. To mark the occasion, but even more importantly to draw attention to how even more poorly science is now being taught in the country’s schools, Civitas this week publishes an anthology edited by its deputy director Robert Whelan, entitled From Two Cultures to… [Read More]