‘Specialing’ is the hospital jargon for the supervision of patients who cannot be left on their own for risk of harming themselves. In effect, specialing most often involves a Healthcare Assistant sitting with the patient for hours at a time, or at best, a member of staff being permanently present in the patient’s ward bay,… [Read More]
This weekend Home Secretary Theresa May wrote of her plans to address the issues of immigration, irregular immigration and asylum. The most notable part of her Sunday Times article was this: ‘When it was first enshrined, free movement meant the freedom to move to a job, not the freedom to cross borders to look for… [Read More]
The economic crisis in 2008 created fertile ground for the anti-establishment, anti-austerity message to flourish. But one of the most pertinent tests for this rhetoric of course, is how the economy performs, whether it grows and whether the electorate actually feels the effects of the growth. As we saw here in the UK a few… [Read More]
Yesterday, an opinion piece by Jeremy Corbyn appeared in the Guardian. It concerned the Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) employed before, during and after the last Labour administration to circumvent limits set on public healthcare spending. PFIs worked by using the private sector to deliver public sector infrastructure, employing private capital but ultimately underwritten by the… [Read More]
In the politics of business relations, there is cozying up to business in order to obtain the veneer of economic competence, and there is creating blunt divisions between good and bad business in order to curry populist favour. At least this is the narrative which has dominated internal Labour politics. In the 2015 general election,… [Read More]
The number of asylum seekers attempting to enter Britain from Calais isn’t a problem caused by UK membership of the EU. If all 28 members were unconnected but economically similar, or joined by a looser EFTA arrangement, Europe would still be seen as safe and attractive to those fleeing conflict. This means that, after Brexit,… [Read More]
It is exciting and unusual to hear the words ‘game changer’ applied by public health professionals to anything to do with smoking. However such words were used by Professor Ann McNeill of King’s College London in Public Health England’s latest report on the practice of vaping (the smoking of e-cigarettes). Now that the UK’s public… [Read More]
By Robert Henderson George Osborne is thinking about abolishing National Insurance (NI) as a separate tax and incorporating it into income tax. The implications of such a move would be very far reaching because the basic NI rules are complex, affecting far more than just NI deductions, and the practical IT difficulties it would create for both the… [Read More]
Joseph Schumpeter is more relevant today than ever before; it seems no industry is safe from digitalisation, automation and globalisation. Telemarketers, accountants and doctors are among a number of prime targets for a dose of creative disruption according to The Economist. Uber may seem like an existential threat to black cab drivers, but it is… [Read More]
The draft terms of the free trade agreement between the EU and Canada have been out for a year and are still being poured over by lawyers and translators from both sides. Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström was overoptimistic in her prediction that this stage would be done by July. Next the European Council and Parliament… [Read More]