Something worth remembering, from comments at Making Light: Back before she became a vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin proclaimed a “Healthcare Decisions Day” in Alaska, when Alaskans would be encouraged to discuss end-of-life care with their physicians. Just last month Newt Gingrich wrote an editorial for the Washington Post praising “community-wide advance care planning”. They’re faking…
Read More obligatory NHS postSo what is wrong with Daniel Hannan? To understand this Tory of the Week, it’s worth looking back to this post on the role of the Daily Telegraph in the world media ecosystem. Specifically, it acts as a sort of reflector attack for nonsense, picking up propaganda that can’t be released directly into the US…
Read More Tory of the Week: Dan HannanFurther, after the last post, BT futurologist says we’re living in science fiction. And what particular works does she mention? Blade Runner, Judge Dredd and Solyent Green. Well. In the world of Halting State, meanwhile, the Germans have had a wee probby with their electronic health cards. Partly it’s due to a reasonably sensible design;…
Read More i’ve got the key, i’ve got the secret…whoopsNow this is absolutely terrifying; the Tory policy on what to do with the NHS National Programme for IT is apparently to give everyone’s data to “Google or Microsoft”. And that appears to be it. This is deranged in several ways. First of all, MICROSOFT??!!! What the fuck are they THINKING? You know, the people…
Read More the purpose of a system is what it doesThere should be a special term for the phase in the adoption of an idea between the point at which everyone accepts its desirability, and the point at which it wins over other ideas politically. This isn’t the same as the point of implementation; it’s quite possible for your idea to go into practice, but…
Read More shooting bits off the zombiesSuddenly, an awful wet crunching and groaning and sick heavy breathing. It’s…huge…festooned in the rags of a once-respectable suit, waving a bladeserver torn from a rack like a child’s toy…dripping with stale blood. No! The NHS IT Zombie has escaped, and it’s fortified itself by eating BT’s brains. Now it’s coming for us. DAATA! it…
Read More brrrains!We’ve blogged before about the NHS’s computer project. So I’m not at all happy about this remarkably silly post at Timmeh’s. He takes issue with a post of Richard Murphy’s about bank nationalisation: Yup, the people who brought you the NHS Spine are to be put in charge of developing all banking software in Britain.…
Read More is there anything stupid going on at Tim Worstall’s?So, the Tories are currently making hay on the economy, while the black clouds are overhead. Unfortunately it’s all drivel, and specifically, it’s drivel because the current economic crisis is entirely the result of the Tory economic settlement. The promise of infinite free money from property was the core Thatcherite proposition, and its costs (specifically,…
Read More The grass is several shades of blue; every MP trips over you…Liberal health policy. Apparently there’s to be a blogger Q&A about this on Tuesday; it looks roughly OK to me, although I’d like to see us offering something genuinely radical like converting some trusts into co-ops. Interesting question; how could that interwork with Clegg’s elected health boards?
Read More Co-operatingHow did a set of medical techniques and institutional styles with absolutely no therapeutic value survive for 2,500 years from ancient Greece to the early 20th century – even though the scientific knowledge required to demolish them had been available since the 1600s? This is the question David Wootton’s “Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm since…
Read More Review: “Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates”, David Wootton