The Nitty Gritty

First published in the NASGP Newsletter on 22nd May 2023 Sometime around 3,500 years ago, someone living in Canaan inscribed the first known sentence in the written history of the world. Not a proverb, not an aphorism. Not the Ten Commandments. The earliest message that has come down to us through the generations was scratched …

It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over

First published in the NASGP Newsletter 26th June 2023 Photo by Carolyn Brown On 5 May 2023 the World Health Organisation declared that Covid-19 was no longer a ‘public health emergency of international concern’. The same day our local convenience store took down the plastic screen which for three years had separated staff and customers. …

Eye of Newt and Toe of Frog?

First published in the NASGP Newsletter on 4th September 2023 A friend’s story: when he was a teenager an eye was severely damaged by a shuttlecock. One conservative treatment after another failed. The consultant decided to try surgery. But he couldn’t see to operate for the blood. He found a way to keep the operating …

Stakhanovism: It Hasn’t Gone Away

First published in the NASGP Newsletter in August 2021 Suddenly, sometime in the 1990s, NHS managers began talking about HR. What was that? Human Resources. What are Human Resources? What we knew as personnel. So the people seeing patients on the front line had become widgets in a corporate machine. Put like that, it sounds …

Sans Teeth, sans Eyes, sans Taste, sans Everything

First published in the NASGP Newsletter in June 2021 There’s a TV series on Netflix which, despite its cringe-making title I think you’d find uplifting, but bear with me . . . The sixth age shiftsInto the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too …

The Health of the Nation: Who’s Keeping Score?

First published in the NASGP Newsletter in April 2021 How many new year’s resolutions have you kept? If I don’t get around to clearing out the box room, no-one is going to hold me to account and it isn’t the end of the world. How many countries fulfil their undertakings to cut carbon emissions? If …