Category: “Health”

A nice cheery start to the week. Not just any old week, but Dying Matters Awareness Week. Did you not know? It kicks off tonight with the Inaugural Dying Matters Lecture in London, delivered by Professor David Cunningham, and followed by a panel discussion chaired by me, with publisher Gail Rebuck and her daughter Georgia [...]

With thanks to South London and Maudsley psychiatrist Jonathan Campion, here is a summary of the report I referred to in my debate with Oliver James in yesterday’s Observer. This statistic that 23percent of our health burden comes from mental disorder, compared with 16percent for cancer and cardiovascular, needs to become as well known and [...]

Unconnected to Leveson, out of the blue comes an email from a former RAF pilot accusing David Cameron of betrayal over his claim that former servicemen and women will not lose out as a result of welfare changes. Betrayal is a powerful theme, and the numbers who feel it are swelling. Environmentalists who were promised [...]

Ed Miliband’s speech on mental health today is a significant – and good – moment in the campaign to improve understanding and treatment of mental illness in Britain. It is perhaps particulalry significant that this is his first major policy speech since he launched the theme of One Nation Labour at the party conference a [...]

Interesting morning in a series of meetings covering variously alcohol abuse, Page 3 girls (and the campaign to get The Sun to drop them and so catch up with the modern world), banks and their diversity policies and various specifications to do with a new bike. Forgive me if for now I focus on the [...]

I missed Little Lord Fauntleroy’s address to the faithful, but it appears I did not miss a new strategy for growth. So that’s two years in a row on that front, Gideon. It is heartening, however, to hear that despite being the most unpopular Chancellor since Norman Lamont, and the most incompetent Chancellor since, er, [...]

Good fun as ever in Ireland yesterday, with a seminar on alcohol abuse with politicians and policy experts, a meeting with the See Change and Headline campaigns against mental health stigma, a tour of twitter HQ and then off to the Late Late Show. Great to meet up again with retiring (in both senses of [...]

Out early-ish today to do breakfast telly (sandwiched between discussions on Kate Middleton’s breasts and Cheryl Cole’s hair) on the Mental Health Discrimination Bill which is getting its second reading in the Commons right now. One or two people even more Labour tribal than I am got a bit antsy at my expressing support and [...]

On Sunday I posted this guest blog from Kathryn Batten on the review of children’s heart services. As a result, some of the local papers in the areas covered by the review have reported that I was ‘stepping into the campaign’. In fact, as Kathryn knows, I have always been clear that on a subject [...]

I woke up this morning to an avalanche of tweets in response to my asking on the way home from Stratford last night why the US, so dominant in Olympic sport, appear to be so relatively marginal in the Paralympics. It is never possible to predict what will get a big reaction on twitter, but [...]