I arrived home from work this evening to find a letter from the NHS.
This letter was informing me that unless I opt out by the 31st of May, the NHS will create a “summary care record” in their spangly new multi-billion pound database.  The pitch informs me that in the first instance only details of [...]

A year and a half ago I wrote about English PCTs weighing and measuring children and sending letters to parents telling them if their child is classed as obese on the fundamentally flawed BMI chart.
Back then I said:
The parents getting the “very overweight” letter will presumably put their child on a diet and the parents [...]

The British government has started making plans to off-load millions of swine flu vaccines it bought during the swine flu hysteria last year.
As expected, swine flu has proven to be less of a problem than seasonal flu and the third wave predicted by the “experts” and the pharmaceutical companies has failed to materialised.
There are now [...]

Yesterday was National Carers Day and BBC Radio Shropshire marked it with features throughout the day.
One of the features was about an announcement of a new scheme for elderly carers.  More money and support is to be given to elderly carers who need their partners to have respite care.  This annoyed me.
My father-in-law has a [...]

A swine flu vaccine is apparently going to be available from next week on the NHS after being fast-tracked through the European Empire’s approval process.
Since the kids have gone back to school the number of cases has started going back up – as it was predicted to do – but there still haven’t been many [...]

I had a letter published in the Shropshire Star the other day:

Easy way of saving NHS cash in England
With all the talk of cutting services at the Princess Royal Hospital, it is worth bearing in mind a few things.  Firstly, the English NHS has been underspending for the last few years by a considerable amount.
Spending [...]

A Twitter friend re-tweeted a request for information about local pharmacies open on a Sunday evening.  Easy I thought, I’ll pop on t’interweb and get the out of hours pharmacy rota off one of the 5 million websites the NHS runs.
Erm no.  NHS Direct has nothing but a list of pharmacies with normal opening hours [...]

Andy Burnham, the British Minister for English Health, has written an open letter to David Camoron calling on him to withdraw the whip from Dan Hannan and any other Tory that criticises the NHS.
What a prize prick.
He rubbishes claims the Tories are the party of the NHS as Camoron claims because Dan Hannan has criticised [...]

I went to the doctors this morning because of an irritating bad chest I’ve had for weeks and while I was there I asked him about the swine flu vaccinations and whether they have a list of at-risk patients already (#2 has a heart condition so I’m naturally interested to know).  He said they do have [...]

A few weeks ago, I emailed Andy Burnham’s office at the Department of Health after watching him talk to the BBC for 5 minutes about the English NHS without once mentioning England.
Dear Mr Burnham,
I just listened to you talk about the English NHS for 5 minutes yet you didn’t mention the word England or [...]

Sir Sandy Macara, former Chairman of the British Medical Association, has called for MMR vaccinations to be made compulsary by making an immunisation certificate a pre-requisite to being accepted for a school place.
He says that doctors have tried to convince parents but it’s not working so it has to be made compulsary, which begs the [...]

The Scottish couple who were the first in the UK to be diagnosed with swine flu have gone home today, covering their faces so as not to spoil their newspaper deal.
The Chief Medical Officer for England says that they won’t be routinely screening people returning from Mexico, even though that’s where the virus is coming [...]

At first I thought this swine flu thing was just scaremongering by the media but now I realise that it’s serious – probably more serious than even the Daily Mail could imagine.
Check your spam folder for online pharmacy emails and order in as much Tamiflu as you can lay your hands on.  Get down to [...]

A Shropshire man has fallen foul of the nationality lottery after Telford & Wrekin NHS Trust refused to treat him with Lucentis to try and save his sight.
Allan Farley has punctate inner choroidopathy and two consultants have told him that Lucentis will help to save the sight in his right eye. He is already blind [...]

My father-in-law is disabled because of an über-rare disorder caused by a brain tumor when he was a child.  He is now deaf, has no balance and has no short-term memory.  My mother-in-law is his carer – he can’t go out without a wheelchair any more, he doesn’t feel pain and if left to his [...]

The Scottish government ban on hospital parking charges came into effect on the 1st of January leaving England the only part of the UK where everyone has to pay to park on hospital car parks.
Hospital car parks have been free to use in Wales since April and in Northern Ireland, chronically ill patients and their [...]

You may recall that back in August I wrote about the NHS deciding it was going to weigh and measure children in England, check them against the Body Mass Index (BMI) and then send parents a letter to tell them if the computer says their child is fat or thin.  You may also recall that [...]

The BBC were bleating this morning about another promised measles epidemic (the last one they said was going to happen didn’t, I wonder if this one will) and navel gazing about the number of children that aren’t getting vaccinated.
What they failed to mention was that it was the BBC was one of the media outlets [...]

The other day I went to the doctors and saw the triage nurse to ask for some antibiotics to sort out the infection in my gum.
I know I’ve got an infection in my gum because I had it about a month and a half ago and I know I need some antibiotics because that’s what [...]

“The authorities” in the West Midlands are appealing for possible victims of a HIV-infected man who has been knowingly having unprotected sex with women for a couple of years to come forward and get tested so they don’t unwittingly pass the infection on to others.
Unfortunately, the man can’t be named for legal reasons even though [...]

The following letter was published in tonight’s Shropshire Star. Unfortunately, whilst editing it they took out “in England” from the end of the first line which makes the whole letter ambiguous.

Kind of PM to think of England
How kind of Gordon Brown, the MP for Kikcaldy and Cowdenbeath in Scotland, to find some loose change down [...]

English PCTs are to send parents letters telling them if their children are overweight.
According to the British government, most parents of fat children don’t think their children are overweight and sending a letter from the local NHS trust using data collected by schools will prompt them to take action.
However, the NHS have told PCTs not [...]

The Ministry of Justice has decided to include Wales in a new bill to introduce specific offences relating to mental and physical abuse in hospitals.  The Welsh government said they didn’t need the law but some Liebour MPs and a peer complained and the MoJ has changed its mind.
I’ve spent a lot more than average [...]

Researchers at Cardiff University reckon they can “cure” osteoarthritis using stem cells.
I have quite bad osteoarthritis in both my knees.  On my left knee, parts of the joint have no cartilage at all and the rest is poor quality, rough cartilage.  On my right knee, it’s poor quality, rough cartilage.  They both make some very [...]

English lose out in funding of health
Tom Taylor, chief executive of the Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital NHS Trust, has confirmed what the Shropshire branch of the Campaign for an English Parliament has been saying for the last couple of years: Treating Welsh patients in Shropshire hospitals is costing millions of pounds that could be spent [...]

The following letter has been sent to the press in the West Midlands and Shropshire MPs:
Tom Taylor, Chief Executive of the Shrewsbury & Telford NHS Trust, has confirmed what the Shropshire branch of the Campaign for an English Parliament has been saying for the last couple of years – that treating Welsh patients in Shropshire [...]

The following article appears in tonight’s Shropshire Star:

Concern grows on ‘health apartheid’
A member of a Shropshire political group has criticised the “health apartheid” of the NHS, which he claims is responsible for county patients receiving poorer services that those in Scotland and Wales.
Stuart Parr, of the Shropshire branch of the Campaign for an English Parliament, [...]

On Monday I pointed out two examples of NHS discrimination in England.
The third example of NHS discrimination this week was announced today – the price of a prescription in England will rise to £7.10 per item.
Meanwhile, in Scotland prescription charges are capped at £5 with 93% being dispensed free of charge.  In Wales, all prescriptions [...]

Two examples of NHS discrimination today …
Discrimination #1
The Welsh Assembly today announced that it is abolishing parking charges in Welsh hospitals.
In Scotland, parking charges in hospitals are capped to £3 per day in the 6% of hospitals that charge for parking and in Northern Ireland only 20% of hospitals charge for parking compared to 92% [...]

No Mandate Brown has announced that the (English) NHS will start offering health screening for heart disease, strokes and kidney disease as well as increasing the screening for some types of cancer.
Health screening is good but it’s still wrong the Gordon Brown is interfering in the English NHS.  He has no say over the NHS [...]