Category: “Health”

The airwaves filled up nicely for the government yesterday, backed by constant use of rag headlines from rag right-wing papers, with the line that most struggling families would be ‘happy’ with £35000 a year. And so they might. But the members of those ‘most families’ eagerly found by TV reporters to agree with the government’s [...]

Today’s blog is given over to a press release from a group of disabled disability campaigners who have exposed the sham that is the coalition government’s public consultation on Disability Living Allowance. It is long, but worth reading. It reveals inter alia, as Boris Johnson might say, the scale of the London Mayor’s opposition to [...]

If you listen to local radio, there is a chance you might hear me today, as I am heading for a marathon local radio session to talk about a new report on schizophrenia. Rethink Mental Illness have commissioned a survey which has exposed the widespread belief in the continuing myths surrounding one of the most [...]

A brief word on the conference on addiction I spoke at in Ireland yesterday, and the visit to Toranfield House, which helps recovering addicts. First though, a tourism plug. County Wicklow has some fabulous scenery, and the autumnal colours were sublime. When I had my recovering from addiction spell many years ago, I could have [...]

As Liam Fox and Chris Huhne were embarrassing themselves and the government last night, I won’t have been the only one to have liked the younger, more feminine look of the new shadow cabinet. But I am sure Ed Miliband and his team understand – getting the new team together is the easy bit. Now [...]

While the press revels in the judgement that allows them to carry on with kiss and tell stories about footballers (provided they are England captain it would seem) I would like to focus not on Rio Ferdinand but on Robert Enke. He was the German goalkeeper who killed himself after a long battle with depression, [...]

One of the downsides (or should that be upsides?) of being moderately well known, and very accessible via social media, is that you get bombarded with people asking for time, money, contacts, ideas and expertise for their (invariably) good causes. On twitter, there is rarely a day, and some days rarely an hour, that there’s [...]

David Cameron’s self-confidence is a trait much commented upon by those who see him close up. Given the sheer scale of issues a PM has to deal with, and the relentlessness of the pressure, it is no bad thing that he possesses it in plenty. But it is not a good quality if it crosses [...]

After yesterday’s guest blog on happiness, today I turn to the subject of madness, more specifically my own. I was approached a few months ago and asked to write a poem for a book being prepared by Bovington Middle School in Dorset, to raise money both for the school’s English deparment and for Help for [...]

A break from politics and the press today, and instead three of my other interests – football, mental illness and plugging books. No, not my own books, though these are available here here here here here and the latest one, Power and Responsibility, here. Oh, and you can pre-order the next one, The Burden of [...]