An apple farmer in Conservative MP Laura Sandy’s Kent constituency gets just £80 a tonne for bruised and mis-shapen fruit rejected by the supermarkets. When she visits local schools and asks how many children are planning a career in food science and production, teaching staff say they don’t want them picking beans out in the […]
Category: Editors at large
Deborah Cohen: Freud PR and public health
What have marketing public health messages and marketing for alcohol and fast food corporations, such as KFC and Diageo got in common? The answer in the UK is Freud PR— a “strategic marketing and communications consultancy for consumer brands, public sector bodies and global corporations.” The £1million a year contract from the Department of Health […]
David Payne: bmj.com redesign feedback week 6
The redesigned bmj.com is now more than a month old and this last blog before Christmas is to update readers about the latest feedback and what we are doing about it. First, citations. A colleague spotted that some older articles were missing page numbers in the citation line. This is now fixed. Second, section pdfs. […]
Tessa Richards: Now is the winter of our discontent
Storm clouds hovered above Brussels. Europe’s heads of state battled away, yet again, to try and save the eurozone from collapse. Down the road an international group of clinicians, researchers, and policy makers questioned how Europe’s beleaguered health systems can cope as demand for care soars and workforces shrink. The European Commission warned member states […]
Domhnall MacAuley: If Ryanair ran the NHS….
No frills: Basic services. Fast, efficient, and result driven. If you want business class comfort, you pay for a business class hospital. The NHS would provide hospital not hotel service. No optional extras—no lifestyle, cosmetic, or non core surgery. A non negotiable list of essential medications generated centrally. If you want medications not on the […]
Deborah Cohen: Censorship and transparency in science
Raw data is a bit like raw sewage—or so says Sir Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust—in it you might find the odd nugget in amongst the garbage. His comment came at a debate hosted by Index on Censorship on transparency in science, pegged to a publication that deals with this very issue. It’s […]
David Payne: Dickens and doctors
Dinah Birch’s recent review of Claire Tomalin’s biography of Charles Dickens celebrates the “exuberant variety” and “multiplicity” of his life. He reinvented himself constantly – child labourer, solicitors’ clerk, journalist, editor, actor, philanthropist, social reformer, and a novelist who like Chaucer and Shakespeare, came to represent his age. Birch could easily have defined Dickens in terms […]
David Payne: Jeremy Clarkson and public sector strikers
The eurozone is in crisis, Britain’s embassy has been stormed in Iran, youth unemployment is above a million, and the US Republicans are struggling to field a presidential candidate whose grasp of foreign policy extends beyond being able to see Russia from their back garden. So guess what the top question was on BBC Question Time […]
Edward Davies: Cheerleading for Lansley at the NHS Alliance
David Cameron’s oft-quoted assertion that the Health and Social Care Bill has now won the support of NHS professionals is much derided. And last week’s volte face from the BMA to actively oppose the bill only further undermines his optimism. In fact it’s hard to find much support anywhere. But support there is and most […]
Edward Davies: Cuts, pensions, and perspective
Walking to the NHS Alliance’s annual conference through Manchester this morning, the streets were peppered with small pickets. University staff, civil servants, transport workers, all sorts of folk objecting to public sector cuts in general and in particular to their potentially diminished pensions. One chap thrust a leaflet at me deploring the effect that cuts […]