Public opinion is fickle. Opinion polls regarding the major parties swing wildly from week to week, in entirely whimsical and unpredictable ways. Labour are doing considerably better now than they were a while ago. The only cause, as far as I can tell, is that David Cameron has been getting a lot of media coverage [...]

Filed under: health, ideas, jonathanbirch on February 1st, 2010 | No Comments »

It’s the centrepiece of Obama’s domestic agenda, and there have been months of haggling, deal-cutting and sausage-making in order to push it through. The prospect of a Democratic loss in the Massachusetts special election has further injected a sense of urgency. Given the unwieldy, dysfunctional nature of the Senate, with its seemingly interminable succession of [...]

Filed under: health, uspolitics on January 19th, 2010 | No Comments »

Today is the second reading of the Mental Health bill in the Commons. This will replace the 1983 Mental Health Act, which has been in the pipeline for a long time. Understandably, mental health professionals and lobby groups are keen to make this bill as good as possible, seeing it will probably be [...]

Filed under: health on April 16th, 2007 | No Comments »

The Independent on Sunday ran with this article leading, at least in the rural village where I obtained a copy. If you can’t be bothered to read it all (and I don’t blame you) it is an apology for a cannabis legalisation campaign that the Independent ran in the 1990s, which retracts the earlier position, [...]

Filed under: crime, davidcameron, health on March 19th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

I imagine David Cameron is secretly rather pleased that his cannabis smoking at Eton has come out. While he may have shocked some of the Tory old guard, he will be counting on gaining credibility with the people he’s really trying to impress – younger, floating voters who probably smoke the odd illicit spliff [...]

Filed under: davidcameron, gender, health, religion on February 11th, 2007 | No Comments »

Health is one of those subjects which most young, fit, healthy people don’t even register: the frequent calls to arms about conditions in nursing homes. MRSA… doesn’t apply to me. NHS reform… could it get any more boring? But the day will come, my youthful friends, when your back will ache, your liver will wither, [...]

Filed under: health on January 22nd, 2007 | 2 Comments »