West of Centre

At a time when the fortunes of the NHS continue to dominate the news, I was fortunate this week to attend a medico-legal training day. Rather than bore people with the latest legal positions on various aspects of healthcare, I would instead prefer to concentrate on some of the frankly extraordinary facts which emerged on the day. I found many of them so astonishing, I felt the need to share them with a wider audience for reasons I will explain later. Before I dive in to a statistical frenzy, let me quote the words of the Health Secretary of Tony Blair's first Cabinet in 1997, "The best place for a lawyer is on the operating table.......Lawyers are milking the NHS of millions of pounds every year - money that would be better spent on healthcare". But do we all appreciate the validity of those words? In 1996/7, there were around 4,000 claims for clinical negligence - negligence being the breach of a legal duty of care owed to one person by another which results in damag

Since David Cameron concluded his negotiations for the UK's current relationship with Europe, it is as though a starting gun has been fired for a race in which tired, out of touch politicians parade like grotesque peacocks in a desperate bid for attention. This is the way of such things in the UK. This is why I'm only surprised that our European colleagues would still want us to remain in Europe given the vanity of our political classes. So what is the problem here? The problem is painfully simple. There are literally millions of British citizens who have never been deemed worthy of of their say over Europe. It is the views of the latter which would take precedence over the politicians. The behaviour of the politicians merely confirms most of what is ailing British life today. We have a political class who have all the answers and a public whose views are deemed tertiary at best. After 41 years of being in the club, I think it's fair to assume that the majority of UK ci