2013 June 09 « Dr Alf's Blog

Rt Hon David Cameron, MP, Conservative Party leader, during his visit to Oxfam headquarters in Oxford. Cropped version. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This article by Peter Oborne in the Telegraph is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED READING. Check it out!

Conservative radicalism can go too far – Telegraph.

Normally, I respect Peter Oborne’s writing but this time disagree strongly with his overall thesis and much of his detailed argument; indeed the article, for me, is rather disjointed.

Peter Oborne starts by commending David Cameron’s Government for being radical and reforming. Personally, I am highly critical of David Cameron‘s achievements in this regard. Here are six unanswered, overarching, open questions:

What is the vision?
Where is the strategy?
Where is the business case, risk analysis and bottom up costing for the so-called reforms?
Where is the implementation plan?
What is the outcome in terms of quantifiable benefits achieved?, and finally
Where is the authority from the UK people?

For me, David Cameron’s Government have been political butterflies, dancing from one petal to the next as it gets too hot in the public glare. Let’s remember that neither David Cameron’s Conservative Party, nor coalition partner Nick Clegg‘s Liberal Party, actually won an overall majority in the last election; so democracy seems to be subordinated by this Government.

Moving on to the second half of Peter’s Oborne’s argument where he talks about Francis Maude‘s proposals to make Permanent Secretaries political appointments; at the sweep of the knife, the proposal is to abandon two centuries of good practice in public administration. Similarly, changes to the legal aide system and possible outsourcing of courts are just as flaky, in my view.

From my perspective, the whole of David Cameron’s policy agenda is looking increasingly flaky. David Cameron does not have a popular political mandate and the people could soon start rebelling angrily, perhaps this Summer if it is hot and the rain hold off. It is time for David Cameron to be challenged, by back-bench Tories, in a vote of no confidence. An early election might start to restore the country’s faith in democracy.

Any thoughts?

The Britons (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yesterday, I reblogged a powerful article in the Guardian entitled “47% of Britons will develop cancer in their lifetime by 2020, study shows | Society | The Guardian“.

I received a very detailed blog from John Gelmini with some wide-ranging policy suggestions for UK healthcare which is reblogged below. Personally, I do not necessarily agree with all of John’s suggestions but they certainly provide a “straw-man” to validate the way forward. I am sharing John’s views because they are in the public interest.

For me, UK healthcare policy and delivery is in melt-down, and there is an urgent need for vision, coordinated strategy and concentrated delivery.

Any thoughts?

How to Stop 47% of Britons from Developing Cancer by 2020 – John Gelmini

The NHS, if it is to be kept, needs to be re-modeled on the French and German systems and Rife machines built to German specifications need to be in all cancer wards, as they are in Germany where cancer treatment outcomes are light years ahead of ours and even America’s. Ronald Reagan refused cancer treatment in the USA; he went to Germany and after treatment lived another 19 years. In the UK he would have died 19 years earlier.

The solution to lower UK cancer rates is not just better treatment but a three pronged approach embodying:

Prevention
The removal of toxic materials from our environment, foodstuffs, products we use and
A different way to incentivize doctors and healthcare professionals.

PREVENTION/REMOVAL OF TOXIC MATERIALS
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–Introduce variable taxes on foods
–Use the ESD Toolkit and CRM to identify people early on who are health risks and then devise prescriptive interventions that create a change in behaviour, including insisting that the morbidly obese and smokers stop before receiving either hospital treatment or certain benefits from the DWP
–Promoting workplace gyms with tax breaks
–Working with private medical insurers to promote healthy living and eating as a precursor to lower corporate and individual insurance premiums
–Discouraging drinking on an empty stomach
–Increased taxes on beer and cigarettes
–Developing safer insecticides and pesticides
–Encouraging a more vegetarian diet (meat is a carcinogen)
–Shielding mobile phones
–Not building new houses within 1 mile of electricity pylons (standard procedure in Russia) or directly under aircraft flight paths to reduce ingestion of antimony from aircraft fuel
–Ban Bisphenol A
–Create harmless dyes for clothing and eliminate carcinogenic substances in washing powder
–Plant more deciduous trees near motorways and sources of industrial pollution
–Encourage the use of anti-oxidants and vitamin supplementation to build immunity from disease
–Promote the Mediterranean diet which is one of the healthiest on the planet
–Put ionisers and FICA plants in offices to clean the air
–Cease chemtrailing using barium salts and other toxic materials to try to solve the “problem” of Global Warming
–Become more self-sufficient in food to discourage imports and reduce freight movements and carcinogenic diesel particulates
–Improve air filtering on cars and commercial vehicles
–Encourage the use of St John’s Wort to lift depression
–Support and encourage traditional marriage in the tax system and discourage single and bazar and unusual lifestyles not conducive to good long-term health.

Statistics show that longevity and freedom from cancer and other life threatening diseases/afflictions is best achieved by heterosexual married couples and people who have friends, are not lonely and who are working/busy.
–Promote enabling philosophies and empowerment tools such as Stoicism,NLP and Alpha Brainwave entrainment to make people better able to cope with the stresses and vicissitudes of life without contracting dread diseases or breaking under pressure.

This should involve churches and other mainstream religions which should provide succour,comfort and outreach or risk having their charitable tax status revoked
–Stimulate and rebuild the economy through exports and enterprise to create jobs(unemployment and austerity without hope causes depression, heart disease and cancer)
–Creating mobile phone apps along the lines of those created by Kaiser Permanente in America which have self help regimes including
—Exercise
—Meditation
—Tai Chi
–Get the NHS and Health Department officials to see food as part of a patient’s treatment not just as an NHS cost.

Then improve hospital food and make sure patients eat it

PAYING DOCTORS AND HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS DIFFERENTLY
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Pay doctors and healthcare professionals on the basis of the proportion of people they keep well not the size of their patient lists.