I’ve just been in the out-patients department of a North London hospital.
I haven’t seen so many patients parked on trolleys in corridors since – well – the last time there was a Conservative Government.

Can anyone explain what it is about this that makes me laugh?

For those who can’t be bothered to click on the link, here is an extract:

“Japanese toilets have long and famously dominated the world of bathroom hygiene with their array of functions, from posterior shower jets to perfume bursts and noise-masking audio effects for the easily-embarrassed.

The latest “intelligent” model, manufactured by market leader Toto, goes a step further and isn’t for the faint-hearted: it offers its users an instant health check-up every time they answer the call of nature.

Designed for the housing company Daiwa House with Japan’s growing army of elderly in mind, it provides urine analysis, takes the user’s blood pressure and body temperature, and measures their weight with an inbuilt floor scale.

“Our chairman had the idea when he was at a hospital and saw people waiting for health checks. He thought it would be better if they could do the health tests at home,” says Akiho Suzuki, an architect at Daiwa House.

Toto’s engineers developed a receptacle inside the basin to collect the urine for sugar content and temperature checks, and an armband to monitor blood pressure. The readout is displayed on a wall-mounted computer screen.

“With the current model, your data is sent automatically to your personal computer, and then you can email it to your doctor,” said Suzuki.

“In the next generation model, the data will be sent automatically to family members or doctors via the Internet,” she told AFP.

The electronic marvel, called the “Intelligence Toilet”, is capable of storing the data of up to five different people and retails for 350,000 to 500,000 yen (about 4,100 to 5,850 dollars) in Japan, she said.

“For now our customers are essentially middle-aged and senior people. But we hope the young generation will also become more health-conscious.”

The model is the latest advance in a string of sophisticated toilets, known as “washlets” in Japan, which have become ubiquitous in recent decades.

The first models were imported from the United States, where they had been used mainly in hospitals, and quickly became standard in Japan in the booming 1980s, finding their way into at least 70 percent of Japanese homes now.

Pioneering Toto designed its first models by asking hundreds of its employees to test a toilet and mark, using a string stretched across the bowl and a piece of paper, their preferred location for the water jet target area.

“For the problem of nozzle angle and water temperature, there was a particular development team dedicated to these tests,” Kuno recalled.

First-time foreign visitors to Japan are often baffled by the complexity of Japanese high-tech toilets, which feature computerised control panels, usually with Japanese language instructions as well as small pictograms.

Standard functions include heated seats, water jets with pressure and temperature controls, hot-air bottom dryers and ambient background music.

A function called “otohime” (literally “princess of sound”) produces a flushing sound to cover bodily noises. A portable gadget is available for customers who want to use it on the go, in restrooms far away from home.

In most recent toilet models, the lid automatically lifts when a user enters the restroom. Men can then push a button to also flip up the seat.

As soon as the user leaves the room, both the seat and lid automatically glide back into horizontal position, a clever feature that can preempt potential conflict between male and female members of the same household.”

I suppose nothing should surprise me about the LibDems, but I was taken aback by their reported reaction to a mid-year cutback in local health services.

My local newspaper, the Hornsey and Crouch End Journal, reports today that there is “Fury as GP walk-in services scrapped“.

The story relates to a decision by the local PCT to abandon a service providing drop-in health services for people who cannot get an appointment to see a GP at the new Hornsey Central Neighbourhood Health Centre, opened only a year ago, having been built at a cost of £12 million.

And who is quoted as being “extremely concerned” about the decision but local LibDem MP and junior Coalition Government Minister, Lynne Featherstone, alongside local LibDem councillor, David Winskill.

Apparently, neither of these local LibDem luminaries have made the connection between the mid-year cuts ordered by the Coalition Government’s emergency budget and the mid-year cuts announced by the local (soon to be abolished) PCT.

And who supports the Coalition Government locally?

Why the self-same local LibDem MP and junior Coalition Government Minister, Lynne Featherstone, and, of course, local LibDem councillors like David Winskill.

They just don’t get it, do they?

Or maybe they do and they are just two-faced hypocrites.

From 24th November 2009:

I spent a big chunk of yesterday visiting Broadmoor Special Hospital, in my capacity as Chair of the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody.  The visit was fascinating, staff were very generous with their time and I learned a lot.

I also enjoyed the security arrangements, which are rather more rigorous than most that I have encountered.  You need a photo-ID, you provide two fingerprints for matching on entering and leaving the hospital, most electronic items have to be left in lockers outside the hospital, and you need to go through a metal detector as well as being searched.  When all that is completed you are issued with a visitors’ identity badge, which carries your photograph, your name and job title or designation.

Presumably, when it came to a job title, only a certain number of characters could be entered on the badge and “Chair of the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody (Ministry of Justice)” obviously didn’t fit.  I found myself bearing the label: “Lord Toby Harris, Minister of Death”.

Fortunately, the font size was quite small, so I think (hope?) that none of the patients could read it ….

I have already explained that I really don’t mind.

However, just in case you really really want to cast your vote for this blog in the Total Politics annual beauty parade, this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
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5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
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8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

Yesterday morning I went to an event hosted by the King’s Fund at which the Minister for Public Health, Anne Milton MP, was the guest speaker.  There was no questioning the Minister’s personal commitment to improving public health, but how much she will be able to deliver will only be clear once the Coalition Government publishes its detailed plans on the subject later in the year.

She clearly feels that her presence on a series of Cabinet Committees will give her the opportunity to shape the Government’s other policies so that they are more beneficial for public health.

I did wonder how much clout in practice she will have. 

For example, will she be able to stop in its tracks the Coalition’s intentions to phase out speed cameras with all the risks of increased road deaths and speed-related serious injuries?

And where was she when the Coalition decided that it should resist the inclusion of Personal, Social and Health Education in the curriculum requirement for its Academy Schools?

I have already explained that I really don’t mind.

However, just in case you really really want to cast your vote for this blog in the Total Politics annual beauty parade, this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

In Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons, David Cameron repeatedly dodged Harriet Harman’s question on the maximum 14-day wait for patients with suspected cancer.

The question she asked was quite simple:

“This week the Government published their White Paper on the national health service. They say that they will get rid of targets. Can the Prime Minister tell us whether patients will keep their guaranteed right to see a cancer specialist within two weeks of seeing their GP?”

His answer was less than clear:

“As for the NHS, what we have decided is that we will keep targets only when they actually contribute to clinical outcomes. We all want to see a higher cancer survival rate. I am afraid that, after 13 years of Labour government, we have not the best cancer outcomes in Europe, and we want the best cancer outcomes. That means rapid treatment, yes, but it also means rapid follow-up, and it means people getting the radiotherapy, chemotherapy and drugs that they need. Those are all essential. The one thing that we on this side of the House will do is continue to put real-terms increases into the NHS, whereas I understand that it is now Labour policy to cut the NHS.”

Harriet Harman tried again:

“Quite apart from the anxiety of having to wait, results are best if treatment starts as soon as possible. That is why it is important to be diagnosed and to see a specialist quickly.

The Prime Minister has not answered the question. The whole House will have seen that. He has dodged the question, just as his Health Secretary did. This is what the Health Secretary said in the House when he, too, was dodging the question:

“I have not said that we are abandoning any of the cancer waiting-time targets at the moment”.

I ask the Prime Minister to give us a straight answer. Will cancer patients keep their guarantee to see a specialist within two weeks—yes or no?”

David Cameron fudged again:

“For some people, two weeks is too long. That is the whole point. If a target contributes to good clinical outcomes, it stays; if it does not, it goes.”

As Harriet Harman pointed out:

“…. the Prime Minister has still not answered. He is obviously ditching the guarantee for cancer patients, but he has not the guts to admit it to the House.”

However, a different response was given in the Lords, when Labour’s Lord Alf Dubs pressed the Parliamentary Under Secretary for Health, Earl Howe, on the same point.  This was the exchange:

“Lord Dubs: My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister can do better than the Prime Minister did in Prime Minister’s Questions earlier today, when he declined to give a guarantee that the 14-day period, within which cancer patients should receive hospital treatment, would be upheld. Can he confirm that the Government will stick to the 14-day period?

Earl Howe: My Lords, that target of a 14-day referral period has a definite clinical underpinning. There are certainly no plans to abolish it.”

That was as clear an answer as you could get.

However, the bad news for cancer patients (and also probably for the good Earl Howe’s job security), when the Lords’ answer was put to the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesperson later in the day, he stuck with the Prime Minister’s fudge and refused to give a clear answer.

I neveronly very rarely have a good word to say for LibDem MPs.  However, when I do come across one talking sense, I feel I should make an effort to mark the occurrence.

So step forward Julian Huppert, MP for Cambridge, and take a bow.

He has written an article for ePolitix.com applauding the BMA for calling for a ban on NHS funding of homeopathy.   He describes himself as “a strong proponent of evidence-based policies” (I won’t ask how he squares that with his support for some of the less-than-soundly based policies of the Coalition Government) and points out that:

“There is no scientific basis for why an extremely diluted solution completely devoid of any active ingredient should be an effective treatment.”

As he says (twice in consecutive paragraphs):

“Homeopathy has been shown to be ineffective beyond placebo.”

He goes on to argue:

“The use of homeopathy by NHS doctors also raises ethical questions. Because the placebo effect ultimately depends on deception, it removes patient choice and undermines the trust inherent in the doctor-patient relationship.

It is unethical to prescribe patients homeopathic remedies while giving them the mistaken impression that they are valid medical treatments.

In these tough economic times where we must look for savings, spending on homeopathy cannot be justified. Disgracefully, our government has no idea how much it spends on homeopathy, but estimates reported by the Guardian place NHS spending on homeopathy at £12 million from 2005 to 2008.

These are millions of pounds that could be spent on treatments that have been proven to be effective at treating patients.”

It was a scandal that the last Government allowed this to continue.  I will watch with interest to see what impact Julian Huppert will have on his Coalition colleagues.

I am not looking for any recognition, as you know these things don’t matter to me at all and I am profoundly disinterested in where this blog comes in the annual Total Politics ranking of political blogs, so I really am not asking for you to vote for me or my blog ……..

but ……..

should you be so inclined (and I repeat I really, really don’t mind one way or the other), this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……