Tag Archives: NHS

Help people searching for advice on cervical cancer jab

By Alex Foster | Thu 8th October 2009 - 4:05 pm

Last week, when I was writing Daily View hours later than I should, I linked to Mark Pack’s piece linking to Malcolm Cole’s piece about Google search results about the cervical cancer jab. Caron Lindsay has also written about this.

Last week, Malcolm Cole was warning that those worried about the cancer jab being given to teenage girls were getting misleading and inaccurate advice if they ran an internet search for more information.

Scary stories have legs, and it’s still the case, a week later, that if you search for information on this story, the leading results are …

Posted in Online politics | 2 Comments

CommentIsLinked@LDV … An Evan Harris double-bill: embryon research and BNP teacher ban

By Stephen Tall | Mon 5th October 2009 - 5:40 pm

It’s not only Vince Cable who’s been all over the papers – the Lib Dems’ science spokesman Evan Harris also has his say today on two very different issues.

First up, in today’s Independent, animal-human hybrid embryo research which, says Evan equires three things to prosper: legal permission, good scientists and more funding. Here’s an excerpt from his article:

Those of us involved in campaigning for human-animal embryo research to be legal during the passage of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill always knew that this was a controversial area of research. But we also knew it was a

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged bnp, education, embryo research, evan harris and science | 3 Comments

The Independent View: Time to better regulate the sunbed industry

By Sarah Woolnough | Sun 4th October 2009 - 1:35 pm

Cancer Research UK welcomes the emphasis placed on public health and disease prevention in ‘A Fresh Start For Britain‘ recently backed by the Liberal Democrat conference – through mention of the need to tackle obesity, alcohol abuse, and smoking. We know that around half of all cancers are potentially preventable, so we welcome this focus. However, we believe there is one important omission – the need to better regulate the sunbed industry.

Earlier this year, the International Agency for Research on Cancer re-classified UV radiation (and therefore sunbeds) – elevating it to it’s highest risk category for cancer, the same as tobacco. Easy access to unregulated sunbed salons, particularly by young people, continues to be a problem across the UK.

Posted in The Independent View | Also tagged cancer | 3 Comments

Lamb slaughters Burnham’s “vague unfunded” hospital parking wish

By Stephen Tall | Thu 1st October 2009 - 8:35 pm

In a pledge so carefully worded it already anticipates its own failure excuses, Labour’s health secretary Andy Burnham yesterday pledged to abolish hospital parking fees:

It’s not right if some people don’t get visitors every day because families can’t afford the parking fees. … We can’t do it overnight, but over the next three years, as we can afford it, I want to phase out car parking charges for in-patients, giving each a permit for the length of their stay which family and friends can use”

Using the phrases “over the next three years” and “as we can afford it” in …

Posted in News | Also tagged andy burnham, norman lamb and parking | 6 Comments

That Andrew Marr question: wrong, wrong, wrong

By Stephen Tall | Sun 27th September 2009 - 5:15 pm

It’s a few weeks since I was emailed an article by John Ward (also sent to a number of other blog-sites), subsequently published at notbornyesterday.org, alleging the Prime Minister suffers from depression and obsessive compulsive disorder, and that these conditions are being treated with prescription pills.

I decided not to publish, or refer at all to the allegations on Lib Dem Voice. As I explained to John in an email at the time, “without named sources for the story it’s not something we could publish on LDV. I appreciate, given the nature of the story, that having sources on the record is difficult, but still.”

The BBC’s Andrew Marr today felt no such compunction, asking Gordon Brown bluntly: “A lot of people in this country use prescription painkillers and pills to help them get through. Are you one of them?” To which the Prime Minister would have been quite entitled to reply – though of course he couldn’t, as Mr Marr would have known – “None of your damned business.”

There are two issues here. First, was the BBC right to pose the question (and I’m sure the line of questioning was cleared at a high level within the Corporation)? And, secondly, should it matter to us what the Prime Minister’s reply was?

Was the BBC right? Absolutely not.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged andrew marr, bbc, blogging, featured, gordon brown and john ward | 37 Comments

‘Trial HIV vaccine cuts infection’ – Evan’s response

By The Voice | Fri 25th September 2009 - 12:20 pm

The BBC reports:

An experimental HIV vaccine has for the first time cut the risk of infection, researchers say. The vaccine – a combination of two earlier experimental vaccines – was given to 16,000 people in Thailand, in the largest ever such vaccine trial. Researchers found that it reduced by nearly a third the risk of contracting HIV, the virus that leads to Aids. Speaking at a news conference in Thailand, US ambassador to Thailand, Eric G. John, said the trial has “brought us one step closer to an HIV vaccine”.

Lib Dem shadow science minister Evan Harris has issued the following response:

The field of HIV vaccine research is littered with failures and disappointments. Ideas which look great on paper or in theory end up not giving protection against the virus in the real world. This is the first time that scientists have come close to making that leap, and it’s a real cause for hope.

“However, it would be premature to say this is a turning point.

Posted in News | Also tagged evan harris and hiv/aids | 1 Comment

Daily View 2×2: 14 September 2009

By Stephen Tall | Mon 14th September 2009 - 9:32 am

2 Big Stories

Guardian: ‘executive pay keeps rising’

Today’s Guardian reports:

Executives at Britain’s top companies saw their basic salaries leap 10% last year, despite the onset of the worst global recession in decades, in which their companies lost almost a third of their value amid a record decline in the FTSE.

The Guardian’s annual survey of boardroom pay reveals that the full- and part-time directors of the FTSE 100, the premier league of British business, shared between them more than £1bn.

Bonus payouts were lower, but the basic salary hikes were more than three times the 3.1% average pay rise for ordinary workers in the private sector. The big rise in directors’ basic pay – more than double the rate of inflation last year – came as many of their companies were imposing pay freezes on staff and starting huge redundancy programmes to slash costs.

The paper quotes Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable:

Posted in Daily View | Also tagged freedom central, james graham, norman lamb, recession and vince cable | Leave a comment

CommentIsLinked@LDV… Peter Black: Wales needs a holistic approach to mental health

By The Voice | Mon 31st August 2009 - 2:45 pm

Over at Wales Online, Lib Dem Welsh assembly member Peter Black, the party’s health spokesman, explains why an holistic approach to health-care is so vital. Here’s an excerpt:

Mental health and wellbeing services have historically been under-resourced in Wales and throughout the UK. Such a position is surprising given the incidence of debilitating mental health problems among the population. The figures are striking – one in four of us will suffer from a mental illness at some point in our lives, and one in seven will suffer to a sufficient degree to warrant therapeutic intervention at some level.

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged peter black | Leave a comment

Time to stop wasting money on “frigging ridiculous” health authorities, says Clegg

By Stephen Tall | Fri 28th August 2009 - 7:45 pm

The Guardian big-ups Nick Clegg’s plans to cut waste in the public services, specifically by trying to rein-in hospital trusts using their monopoly position to drive up costs. The paper bills it as “one of the most radical ideas of any of the main political parties to save money”:

Under the Lib Dem plan, hospital trusts would be forced to charge the same rate for operations as the cheapest and most efficient hospitals in the country.

Clegg said: “It is a very specific but rather radical idea, of saying that all hospital tariffs under the ‘payment by results’ system should match the most efficient tariffs in the hospital system. We think that would save about £2bn a year.”

Posted in News and Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged nick clegg and the guardian | 2 Comments

Setting the Record Straight: Labour and the NHS

By Seth Thevoz | Fri 21st August 2009 - 9:20 am

So, it’s the silly season again, and politicians are once more gripped by an irrational argument. No change there.

But for those of us who study history, the latest furore over the NHS is positively nauseating, with people apparently split into the camps of those who decry its very right to exist, and those who suddenly pretend they haven’t spent the last few years grumbling about how it’s in dire need of reform.

Part of this division is built upon a myth – a boil that needs to be lanced. We’re so used to Labour politicians churning out the line that Labour gave us the NHS, that we’ve begun to unthinkingly accept it. When Ian McCartney MP celebrated Labour’s centenary in 2006, he actually shed a tear for the NHS as Labour’s greatest triumph. Anyone familiar with 1940s history will tell you that this version of events is a cruel lie.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged william beveridge | 36 Comments

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Norman Lamb on NHS parking charges

By Helen Duffett | Wed 19th August 2009 - 2:02 pm

Liberal Democrat Health spokesman Norman Lamb says the NHS is using car parking charges as a “tax on the sick.”

From the Telegraph:

Every year the NHS in England makes over £100 million from parking charges. While these charges do generate some much-needed income for the NHS, they can also cause real hardship for patients and their families. Patients are often faced with eye-wateringly high parking costs, but poor public transport links means that they sometimes have little alternative but to pay up. This is a scandalous and unfair situation: it needs to change.

However, I do not believe that we

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged norman lamb | Leave a comment

Second day for #welovetheNHS

By Alex Foster | Thu 13th August 2009 - 6:36 pm

Yesterday we brought you news about the bizarre battle between American rightwingers spreading misinformation about the NHS, and British users of the NHS who were actually quite proud of it.

24 hours later and Tweetminster (which monitors the twitter updates of MPs and PPCs and provides a service where you can search them) reports

65 #welovethenhs tweets from MPs & PPCS. 8 from @UKLabour MPs & 4 PPCs, 3 from @LibDems MPs & 3 PPCs, 1 from @Conservatives PPC

Our own Nick_Clegg was amongst them, as was Prime Minister Brown (whose tweet looks like it’s had help from …

Posted in Online politics | Also tagged charlotte gore, gordon brown, mitch benn, nick clegg and welovethenhs | 15 Comments

Here at LDV, #welovetheNHS

By Alex Foster | Wed 12th August 2009 - 3:49 pm

One of Obama’s key pledges in the US Presidential elections was major healthcare reforms. The US is a deeply divided nation on health as in many other policy areas – it is simultaneously home to some of the planet’s best hospitals, the best research in medical advances and the best healthcare practioners – and also home to some of the worst poverty and barriers to healthcare, the worst developed-world child mortality rates.

Without being facetious, almost all of my knowledge of the American healthcare system comes from my knowledge of US TV. And whilst House has access to an amazing battery …

Posted in LDVUSA and Online politics | Also tagged welovethenhs | 17 Comments

Thousands of botched operations in Scottish hospitals

By Helen Duffett | Thu 6th August 2009 - 10:54 am

A parliamentary question by the Liberal Democrats has revealed that more than 3,000 patients’ organs were accidentally cut or punctured during surgery over the past five years.

From the Scotsman:

The figures, obtained by Ross Finnie, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman, reveal a series of mistakes, including unintentional cuts during operations, and failure of sterile precautions during surgery.

The errors also include instances where “foreign bodies” were accidentally left in a patient’s body during surgery, and an “inappropriate” operation being carried out.

Mr Finnie, who obtained the statistics through parliamentary answers, said: “Most patients will accept that undergoing operations is not without a

…

Posted in News and Scotland | Also tagged ross finnie | 5 Comments

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Vince Cable – My lost appendix – and what it taught me about the NHS

By The Voice | Mon 15th June 2009 - 12:24 pm

Over at the Daily Mail, Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable reflects on his recent brush with A&E after he had his appendix removed. Here’s an excerpt:

My short experience told me that there is now excellent quality care in the NHS provided by some first-class people. I also sensed that the services are potentially fragile if put under financial stress.

My own adventure began when I collapsed in a heap several times after dinner at a friend’s house. The initial theory was food poisoning – a House of Commons crayfish sandwich eaten earlier in the day was chief suspect. When

…

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged vince cable | 2 Comments

As if swine ‘flu weren’t bad enough…

By The Voice | Thu 30th April 2009 - 9:45 am

Lib Dem shadow health secretary Norman Lamb has warned that diseases such as whooping cough and scarlet fever are making a “dramatic comeback”. The Health Service Journal reports:

Cases of whooping cough have almost trebled since 2003, from 386 to 1,071 a year in 2008. The number of cases of scarlet fever has risen from 2,121 in 2003 to 2,845 in 2008.

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said: “It is shocking that diseases which should belong to a bygone era are making a dramatic comeback. Ministers have ‘failed in their duty’

“Many of these illnesses can be prevented with a

…

Posted in News | Also tagged norman lamb | 1 Comment

Miriam attacks stem cell waste

By The Voice | Mon 6th April 2009 - 1:12 pm

The Independent has the full story:

The wife of the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has criticised the financial and bureaucratic barriers that prevent British mothers from donating discarded umbilical cords to a national tissue bank.

Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, who married Mr Clegg in 2000, said she wanted to donate the cord blood cells of her third child, Miguel, to a national tissue bank but was told it was impossible.

Cord blood contains stem cells that can be used in transplant operations to treat a range of disorders relating to the blood and immune system, such as leukaemia and anaemia.

The Government has

…

Posted in News | Also tagged miriam gonzalez durantez and stem cells | Leave a comment

LDV readers say: No to a minimum price for alcohol

By Stephen Tall | Mon 30th March 2009 - 11:33 am

On the day that chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson was recommending that the government establish a minimum price for alcohol (which would see the doubling of the price of many beers and spirits) LDV posed the question: Is it time to support a minimum price for alcohol?

Here’s what you said:

>> 31% (102 votes) – Yes, minimum prices will help tackle the UK’s binge drinking problems
>> 6% (19) – Maybe, there’s merit in the proposal but the middle of a recession is the wrong time
196% of all votes
>> 59% (192) – No, government should not penalise the

…

Posted in Voice polls | Also tagged alcohol | 16 Comments

The database state and the true cost of Labour’s free lunches

By James Graham | Mon 23rd March 2009 - 9:55 am

During the Unlock Democracy debate at the Convention on Modern Liberty last month, Justice Minister Michael Wills defended the growth of the database state by arguing:

“We’ve heard a lot of about datasharing today. But that datasharing, that so many here today say is an unacceptable intrusion of privacy by the state, can actually help thousands and thousands of children who are eligible for free school meals but don’t get them at the moment… Look, it’s all very well for you to sit here. You’ve probably all had a hot meal in the last week. One

…

Posted in Big mad database and Op-eds | Also tagged contactpoint, database state, education, michael wills, national dna database and national identity register | 7 Comments

PMQs: Stafford Hospital and the “frenzied” target system

By Alix Mortimer | Wed 18th March 2009 - 4:55 pm

Quite an interesting session this: several questions, from all sides, did a good job of uncovering the deeply managerial soul of New Labour, and its according fixation with formulating strategy rather than getting things done, and with punishing management failure rather than seeking its root causes in the bigger picture.

First, Cameron and Brown battled again, quite earnestly this week, over the economy. The bones of contention were Stuff and Things this time, rather than the more usual Apologies and Hurt Feelings, and the session was the better for it. Cameron sought to prove that all the grandiose schemes and initiatives Brown announces week by week are not being implemented properly. Ministers, apparently, have admitted as much, but Brown stays in his “bunker”. Cameron’s definition of when the recession began differs from Brown’s (to whose advantage I know not. Cameron says the recessions began when the economy stopped growing in April, Brown says we entered recession in July – is there a technical right or wrong answer here, gentle reader?)

Posted in Parliament and PMQs | Also tagged david cameron, gordon brown, nick clegg and PMQs | 7 Comments

NEW POLL: do you support a minimum price for alcohol?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 16th March 2009 - 9:37 am

Government ministers have spent the last 24 hours distancing themselves from the proposal of chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson to establish a minimum price for alcohol which would see the doubling of the price of many beers and spirits.

Today’s Guardian reports:

Plans to charge a minimum of 50p per unit of alcohol are to be put forward by Sir Liam Donaldson today. The Scottish government is planning to introduce minimum prices for alcohol and these could come into force by the end of the year. It would make Scotland the first country in Europe to introduce minimum pricing,

…

Posted in News and Voice polls | Also tagged alcohol, liam donaldson and nick clegg | 27 Comments

Lamb reveals 50 Health civil servants earn £100k+

By The Voice | Tue 13th January 2009 - 1:40 pm

From today’s Telegraph:

The number of staff earning three-figure salaries at the Department of Health has shot up from just eight in 1997 when Labour came to power. Norman Lamb, Liberal Democrat health spokesman who obtained the figures in response to a written Parliamentary question, said: “For too long the Government’s priority has been increasing the amount of bureaucracy in the NHS.

“The explosion in the number of managers, not just in the Department of Health but across the NHS in general, is crazy when front line services are under huge pressure. People will be shocked that so many civil

…

Posted in News | Also tagged civil service and norman lamb | 9 Comments

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Mathew on Monday: “We need to be bold” (Mathew Hulbert)
As a party we must be better defined for the 2029 general election (Chris Bowers)
From national averages to local realities: inequality in our communities (Tom Walker)

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Tag Archives: NHS

Help people searching for advice on cervical cancer jab

CommentIsLinked@LDV … An Evan Harris double-bill: embryon research and BNP teacher ban

The Independent View: Time to better regulate the sunbed industry

Lamb slaughters Burnham’s “vague unfunded” hospital parking wish

That Andrew Marr question: wrong, wrong, wrong

‘Trial HIV vaccine cuts infection’ – Evan’s response

Daily View 2×2: 14 September 2009

2 Big Stories

CommentIsLinked@LDV… Peter Black: Wales needs a holistic approach to mental health

Time to stop wasting money on “frigging ridiculous” health authorities, says Clegg

Setting the Record Straight: Labour and the NHS

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Norman Lamb on NHS parking charges

Second day for #welovetheNHS

Here at LDV, #welovetheNHS

Thousands of botched operations in Scottish hospitals

CommentIsLinked@LDV: Vince Cable – My lost appendix – and what it taught me about the NHS

As if swine ‘flu weren’t bad enough…

Miriam attacks stem cell waste

LDV readers say: No to a minimum price for alcohol

The database state and the true cost of Labour’s free lunches

PMQs: Stafford Hospital and the “frenzied” target system

NEW POLL: do you support a minimum price for alcohol?

Lamb reveals 50 Health civil servants earn £100k+

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Josh Babarinde writes…The Lib Dem Summer of Strategy

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What’s going on with party strategy?

A strange but welcome feeling

Tag Archives: NHS

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