All Michael White articles – Page 13
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CommentMichael White on Andy Burnham's rise through the ranks
Well, well. What a turbulent week for health politics and it is not over yet. By the time you read this, a day or so after I have typed it, Alan Johnson may still be the new home secretary.
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Michael White on the big split over ISTCs
Andrew Lansley has been out and about attacking Alan Johnson’s record as a failed health secretary (“the postman who hasn’t delivered”) on the grounds he has not closed the health gap between rich and poor - and also let the NHS’s Blairite choice agenda atrophy.
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CommentMichael White on the patient-consumer parallel
It is always good to hear the NHS’s top brass trumpeting the service’s virtues, as NHS chief executive David Nicholson did when launching his third annual report. At least his list of modest triumphs serves to counteract some of the negativity generated by more regular reports of NHS failures in ...
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CommentMichael White: a search for good news in the NHS
With the expenses scandal delivering the most humiliating week for Westminster politics that I can remember in 30 years this column is committed to finding something more cheerful to write about MPs today.
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CommentMichael White on integrity and whistleblowing
Amid the uproar over the MPs’ expenses scandal three prime ministers addressed health issues this past week. I refer, of course, to Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Alan Johnson, who is also now tipped (improbably) to succeed Alistair Darling in Number 11.
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CommentMichael White on swine flu and leadership
This column’s established policy is not to panic over either swine flu or Labour leadership flu. Outbreaks of both occur from time to time and are easily spread by modern life, notably by air travel and 24-hour TV news channels. The authorities do their best.
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Michael White on the Budget crisis
A shadow Cabinet heavyweight summed up the Budget crisis with brutal clarity: “We have been paying nurses by taxing bankers’ bonuses. It’s unsustainable,” the MP observed with some sadness.
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CommentMichael White on the Budget
Not a good Easter break for the extended White family. Between us we suffered a car crash, an emergency caesarian and a burglary.
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CommentMichael White: 'You rarely read about the kindness'
Unlucky Alan Johnson popped up in the prime time 8.10 spot during the bank holiday Monday edition of the Today programme to protest Number 10’s inherent decency in the wake of Damian “email” McBride’s resignation.
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CommentMichael White on the recent political populism
Watch out for political populism in troubled times. Most of us have been indulging in banker-bashing, but such enjoyably bad habits can be contagious and beneficial chiefly to extremists on the prowl. I spotted two crowd-pleasers that affect HSJ readers only this weekend.
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CommentMichael White on the effect of unemployment on health
A flurry of excitement hit the Commons press gallery when it was rumoured health minister Ben Bradshaw had said unemployment would be good for British men.
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CommentMichael White on NHS bad news
Oh dear, it is barely a week since I wrote elsewhere that everyone knows “the NHS is much better” nowadays. Since then there has been a steady trickle of bad news, from Mid Staffs trust and from Birmingham children’s hospital, and poor cancer mortality outcomes.
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Michael White on health inequalities
Late Sunday afternoon I made myself comfortable to read the latest Commons select committee report on health inequalities before cooking our planned supper of grilled fish and greens.
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Michael White on the Health Bill
The world economy may tremble, but life goes on. So the House of Lords is getting stuck into the government's ragbag new Health Bill in its own inimitable way.
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Michael White on NHS bad news
Some politicians suspected Alan Johnson deliberately chose to make his announcement on top-ups on the same day as Barack Obama's election to the US presidency in the hope that he could 'bury bad news.'
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Michael White on Conservative healthcare policy
On the conference circuit this autumn I've been conscious of being generous in my remarks about the prospect of a Conservative government in regard to its policies on the NHS.
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Michael White on the global financial crisis
By the time you read this, Labour's 2008 party conference in Manchester will be over and Gordon Brown will still be prime minister, despite whatever has happened or not in the interval.
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Michael White on feminism
I couldn't help noticing in recent days how feminism kept popping up. As part of the wider debate about equality affecting class and poverty, gender, race, disability, it never goes away.
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Michael White on rating doctors
As the government winds down towards what it hopes will be a welcome summer break (don’t bank on it), it’s been home secretary Jacqui Smith’s week.
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Michael White on Darzi politics
Even before the saintly Lord Darzi uttered the first sentence of his latest report, or Henley had even voted, the Cameroon Conservatives had got their NHS retaliation in first.